Women are beautiful. They are mysterious to us men, because we only know ourselves and our own bodies firsthand. I am attracted to women, or at least mostly. No one is 100% straight or gay, after all.
But I mostly do not like men. We men are responsible for a lot of the horrible things we see in the world today. There are no mad woman dictators, no cruel female CEOs, no female rapists or white supremacist bloggers or anti-abortion protesters. Men are not pleasant to look at. Men are not taught and socialized to be kind and emotional and compassionate, lest they be labeled as “gay” and promptly beaten to death by their straight comrades, lest they recognize the small part of themselves that is also gay.
That isn’t to say that I wish all men would disappear (because that would mean myself included, and I like being alive), but a world of nothing women would certainly be something to see, and a world much different than ours.
It is into just such a world that normal-loving protagonist Mariko Uruuno finds herself, with absolutely no ceremony, suddenly waking up to one day. All the boys and men she knew of are gone, replaced with either female counterparts or nothing.
Suffice to say, this is not “normal”, and Marika is left desperately searching for a way back to her ordinary world. Along the way, she befriends school idol Lily Kanzaki and the two begin their strange quest together, as well as the strange quest of becoming closer to each other.
This short series has been collected into one volume and has been on sale in English since this summer. I would highly recommend giving it a read.
Granted, it’s not always that great. We barely see any of this unusual world: no woman/woman couples raising daughters together, no high school girls confessing their love, no woman/woman pregnancies. The best we are offered are a handful of crowd shots, set up just to showcase the lack of men, or meant to fill in the otherwise blank space that would be otherwise surrounding Marika and Lily.
The girl-world we find ourselves in is, for the most part, literally filler.
The story itself also doesn’t make a ton of sense and kind of meanders until the ending. Without giving anything away, much of the story is spent on Marika and Lily’s budding relationship and its interdimensional hurdles, before wildly swinging into psychic powers, repressed memories and the slightest hint of gunplay.
But I still fully intend to try and pick up a copy of this manga from my local Barnes and Noble at the next reasonable chance that I get.
That being said, the last time I was there, they no longer had it on the shelves.
So fingers crossed, people.
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