manga: Moon Child Vol 2-5

[meganbmoore]

This remains possibly the most bizarre yet compelling manga that I’ve ever read.

In case you’ve forgotten or never knew, it’s the one based on The Little Mermaid where mermaids are aliens who swim through space to use Earth as a mating ground, apparently making it habitable in the process, but Seira, the little mermaid, doomed both races by abandoning her mermaid fiancé for the human prince (who still didn’t choose her anyway) thus dooming both races, unless her daughter, Benjamin, mates with Shonach, the fiance’s son. Except that Benjamin has somehow been turned into a bowtie-wearing little boy with amnesia, who still has the mind of a young boy with s/he returns to his/her true form.

Some people have a manga/book/movie/series/etc. of Deep Feminist Shame. This is a series of deep everything shame. The leader of the mermaids is a black woman with an offensively stereotyped design. Child abuse is treated as slapstick humor. Real life dangers and tragedies are turned into dramatic reasons Shonach absolutely must mate with Benjamin. Almost every woman in the book is either an evil conniver, or a (thankfully sympathetic) woman who is blindly in love with a man busy obsessing over someone else. Our heroine, Benjamin, is, for all intents and purposes, a little boy, and when s/he’s a woman, s/he is mute. Her love interests are the man who adopted her as Jimmy, the little boy, who hits him/her, and Shonach, who loves her due to their destiny and must mate with her to save both races, stop Earth from becoming a wasteland, and keep the other mermaids from killing her so one of her androgynous brothers can become female and mate with Shonach.

How can that happen, you ask? In one of the more interesting bits of the series, the biology of the mermaids is based on that of clownfish, where the most dominant fish becomes female, the second most dominant male, and the rest remain sexless. Incidentally, Teruto, the evil sibling, is sterile, and Seth, the sweet one, will be fertile if his gender changes. Teruto is also possibly in love with Seth, and agrees to sacrifice the entire planet to the Sea Witch if she/he/it will save Seth. Incidentally, the siblings are triplets, and were raised on the moon by Seira’s sisters.

Despite all this-or maybe because of it-the book is incredibly compelling. While I may not like a lot of the characters or their motives, they’re well drawn and interesting, whe worldbuilding is insane, but interesting, and the take on the fairy tale is an interesting and original one. Not to mention some of the imagery, such as the schools of fish swimming through the air.

In conclusion, alien mermaids who swim through space to use Earth as a mating ground. And sometimes possess nice young men so they can destroy the planet out of love.

Comments

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Wow, that does sound absolutely insane. It makes me kind of want to read it.

Reiko Shimizu, eh? I've heard good things about her.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Insane but good! In a totally different way from Speed Grapher!

[abimoe.livejournal.com]

I'm totally intrigued now.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

DO EET!

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

I still say Moon Child is probably her most accessible work. >_>

I love her stuff to death, but even friends that usually trust my taste tend to back away when I attempt to explain Elena's mental issues. ("No, no! He really is an interesting, likable character, I swear! Yes, he kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach to try to make her miscarry, but...shit, there really is no explaining that unless you read it for yourself, is there?")

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

BTW, forgot to mention, Elena is a character from a different series, not Moon Child. Unless you read the extras in the back of volume one that make absolutely no sense unless you've read "Jack and Elena". If you have, they're hilarious, if not they're...yeah.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Haven't reached that part, but I've had fiction try to explain to me why I should still like characters after they do things like that. It has yet to work.

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on your tolerance for severely emotionally damaged robots with no understanding of how humans feel about things--which was the entire point of that arc, for Elena to continue to learn how to be a little less broken through empathy with others. To Shimizu's credit, it's not like the narrative, Jack, or Louise were okay with it at all (later she almost kills herself freaking out when Elena is going to be left alone with her baby).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha! Most insane, shameful, yet compelling manga ever!

Wait till you get to Teruto's Flashback of Moon Emo. WEEEEEN!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Vols 6-9 are heeeeeerrrrrreeeeeee.