Of Swords and Parasols

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.