Hiwatari Saki - Global Garden, vol. 01-08 (Chi. trans.) (spoilers)

[oyceter]

No one is going to read this post, are they? And I so want to talk about all the spoilery bits!

Series-destroying spoilers

I think I cried buckets at the ending. Buckets! I was so worried about Hikaru, even though I was fairly sure the series would have a happy ending. But I was afraid Hiwatari was going to do something squicky like displace Ruika's love for Hikaru onto Robin (ewwwwww) thanks to the clone-ness. And I was afraid for most of the series that Haruhi/Lyle would end up becoming the hero, just because I am still unsure if Hiwatari's ideas about relationships and heroes corresponds with mine, especially after reading PSME. (Seriously though! I was scared of both potential pedophilia and villain-turned-hero!)

I do not completely buy Lyle's about-face, but I will take what I can get. And I am really glad Sissy got a happy ending, because I liked her, even though she was working for the wrong side.

The evil scientist half-brother is totally Jezebel Disraeli, only with less organs and brains in jars and more pills.

I am... still trying to decide what I think about the mystical pregnancies. I rather like the one that resulted in Ruika's birth, the notion that she doesn't belong to any particular person, the gender-flipping of the child of the virginal conception. And I mostly do like the solution to Hikaru's death, that Robin gets to be reborn, but it also takes away a little from what I loved best about the three of them, that they were a chosen family, not a genetic one (well, that they knew of). On the other hand, I do like that they are still a chosen family; Ruika gets to choose who her child will be, and Robin gets to agree before it happens. And of course I can't help but compare it with all the other mystical pregnancies on US TV, although I like that this one is not forced on Ruika, that the mother, not the child, is the savior of humanity, and that Ruika chooses it as a way to preserve not just one life, but two.

There's also a lot I wanted to think about regarding birth and life, how Ruika's fertility is tied in with the world tree and the salvation of earth. The way Hiwatari and Ruika tied it in to her decision to accept being female annoyed me a little, as it felt a bit like "Only if you are female can you bear life." And there's something in there about conception within a womb via trees/gardens/seeds/growing green things vs. conception within a womb via cloned sperm, hard science against soft nature, and I dislike how that fairly straightforwardly falls within gender lines.

And yet. I keep poking at it because I do find the ending powerful, because I do love Ruika as a goddess of growing things even as she's a lost, hurt girl, I love the juxtaposition of healing yourself with healing others and the world and the way that that healing is clearly validated not only by the women in the series, but by everyone save the villains, and how even most of the villains are only trying to reach out and have someone by their side.

And oh, the way Hiwatari managed to tie everything together at the end! How Ruika becomes Urd on her quest to find a way to save Hikaru, the repeated imagery of her slit wrist and the blood, the way she is Skuld in her vision, hurt and reaching out, but the way she is only Skuld because that's how the evil doctor (I forgot his name) dressed her, she is Skuld the reflected image of herself.

Other things I liked: the explicit acknowledgement that Hikaru was nudging Ruika to become Ruika again not just because Skuld is female, and that if Ruika had truly wanted to become a guy, he would have been totally okay with that. It was that she was doing it for her mother instead of herself that was the problem. I also like that Ruika is still uncomfortable with many of the trappings of femininity, that she doesn't miraculously get a makeover and grow breasts and that's that.

I am still so sad about the death of Ruika's mother, even though I know Hiwatari was doing it to make Hikaru's resurrection all the more affecting and impossible-seeming. The freak accident nature of it still feels too freak-accident-y.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I read it! :) Like I said in my other comment, I really don't remember much about the series (even though I think I only read it like four years ago D:), but I loved it a lot and I've never seen anyone talk about it before, so yay. :D

[oyceter]

Yaaaay! I love that even though this isn't licensed and hasn't even been completely scanlated, someone has still read the entire thing! Although I am very impressed... I had a hard time with some of it in Chinese (Robin's genetic material), cannot imagine it in Japanese.

But yeah, I think I will forget a ton of plot details very shortly, since it's pretty complex. But that will just make for fun rereading.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I kind of want to read it again myself now! I'm actually planning a reread of PSME, which I didn't really want to do, because it's long, and 21 volumes of reread takes away from 21 volumes of new stuff on my ever-increasing to-read list, but when I went to read the sequel, Boku wo Tsutsumu Tsuki no Hikari, I found I barely even remembered who the other characters were aside from Rin and Alice, or what had gone on at all. D:

[oyceter]

Hahahaha! Yeah, I know! I want to read the sequel as well, although I am hoping that it doesn't have some of the same sporky elements the original does. But maybe a reread will make things make much more sense, since I went through it so fast the first time around and was down with a cold to boot.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

EEE! I haven't read all of it because it hasn't been completely scanlated, but I read your spoilers anyway. And now I want to reread all of what's been scanned.

[larryhammer]

What do you think I've been doing this morning? :-))))

---L.

[oyceter]

Eeeee! I want it to finish scanlating so people can talk about the ending with me!

I realized that some plot points and whatnot were dropped only a month after reading it; right when I was reading it, I was completely sucked in. And oh, I just love Ruika, especially in the first few volumes.

[larryhammer]

The original scanlators imploded, and the replacement group had been releasing things at a pretty good clip, but they've been all but moribund since Christmas. One hopes that's temporary -- and they have a fairly large credit of slack from me for already completing Love Monster, and Cat Street, and Eensy Weensy Monster.

Slack, however, only stretches so far.

---L.

[coffeeandink]

Okay! I just finished it. It doesn't make me cry, like PSME does, but on the other hand it doesn't have random yakuza plots wandering in from Hiwatari's juvenelia, either. Also, the hero is not a rapist! This makes me happy.

She really has a thing for precocious and mildly creepy little boys. There's one in Tower of the Future, too. I think Robin is by far the least creepy, though. I was so sad he died.

I ... am not going to think about the science of Hikaru and Einstein's child.

It ends up being such a smaller and more intimate story than I expected. I'm not sure what I think, except that it's worth it all for Hiroshima as Yggdrasil burning.

[oyceter]

Hee, we are opposite, since I think I blazed through PSME so fast I didn't cry!

Also, yay the hero not being a rapist!

I was so afraid she was going to have Ruika hook up with Robin as a replacement for Hikaru, thanks to PSME.

I think I really love the small intimacy of it; I got so caught up in it emotionally because of the weight of the relationships between Hikaru and Ruika and Robin and Ruika's family and etc.