Translated by JN Productions
193 pages
Published 2015 (English translation 2018)
Read April 11
Rating: 3 out of 5
It’s been about a month since I read Volume 3. Clearly that was enough time to leave me almost entirely lost when I picked up this installment. Umeda swerves between perspectives in a bloody action sequence as the apátheia, or harlequin soldiers, continue to raid the Mud Whale. Exposition gets doled out mid-battle. It’s difficult to make sense of it all.
The main vibe is one of intense, sometimes melodramatic emotion. Pretty much every character either dies in horrific, pointless violence, or survives to weep about them in the aftermath. It makes sense thematically. The central conflict is between the residents of the Mud Whale, who are free to feel their emotions, and the emotionally-drained apátheia, who view them with mingled disdain and disgust. The heightened emotional stakes are thus central to the story being told.
One could read any number of allegorical interpretations into this; in the contemporary world, it’s tempting to see it as empathetic, compassionate people hounded to the ends of the earth by the sociopathic adherents of patriarchal capitalism.
I think I’ll enjoy this series more if I read them closer together, and can keep better track of who any of these people are. I have four more volumes checked out from the library that I’ll likely use to pad out my reading numbers for this month. After that, our library doesn’t stock any of them, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue the series. It’s long, much longer than any other manga I’ve read.
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