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CAST

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REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  100/100
  Fantastic series involving real elements about a political conflict with a supernatural war being waged behind it.

  

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  Introduction

  Hito Hitori Futari is a manga by Tsutomu Takahashi. It is a drama with very heavy supernatural and psychological elements. Because on the surface, it's a lot of political conflict. But deeper, it's the story of a man who has learned how much time he still has left on this Earth and has become able to see and converse with his guardian spirit, and how he wishes to use every single ounce of his life left within him to make Japan a better place by steering the country towards denuclearization.

  But of course, humans aren't supposed to be able to talk with their guardian spirits. Let alone their guardian spirits actually telling them their remaining lifespan on this Earth. This causes a rather determined opponent who also has supernatural powers to emerge and become hellbent on stopping their progress no matter what the cost is. Additionally, there is of course the general opposing side who views nuclear power very much as a necessary thing to have.

  So while you have this war of politics going on, you also have this hidden and unseen spiritual war being waged as well.

  ---

  There's just so much going on...

  Okay, now let's see. What the fuck is all in this thing?

  • The political war and all of the stuff about the danger of nuclear power.
  • The journey of a guardian spirit trying to earn their way to rebirth.
  • The story of a man attempting to use the rest of his life to do as much as possible good as he can, however he has to do it and no matter what the price he has to pay.
  • The transformation the man undergoes. From useless and openly mocked politician to confident badass who genuinely wants to change the country despite receiving overwhelming resistance from ALMOST EVERYONE.
  • "I want to save everyone. But there is a nightmarish entity who is going to actively target everyone close to me to try and stop me."
  • Pain and grief, EVERYWHERE AND ON ALL SIDES.
  • Supernatural war, light versus the corrupting evil of absolute malice.
  • Generally, it's actually a story of "good vs evil" but the "evil side" have very understandable reasons why they're opposing the "good side" yet still manage to be greatly effective as the "evil side."

  I usually go more in-depth into the general plot of the things I review than this, but no. Just go read it. If anything in the above list sounds something that would appeal to you, just go and read it. I don't want to spoil literally anything.

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  The Art

  

  I rarely bring up the art in stuff but... I loved every single panel of this. I am an absolute sucker for darkness and as I've already stated, in this manga, it's literally darkness versus light. And it is just...

  

  Yeah okay. Fine. I still have the characters to do, but just take the 10 out of 10 right now. God damn it.

  ---

  Characters

  I should go right ahead and say I'm only going to cover the three "main" characters, but there are other characters I also really loved.

  First, we have the character the entire manga began with.

  

  Riyon, a spirit forced to become a guardian spirit if she ever hopes to be reborn into the human world. She starts out as a lazy spirit who, in picking the human she was to guard over, actively wanted someone with a very small remaining lifespan. Little did she know, it turned out to be the prime minister of Japan and an entire country's worth of malice and disdain would be coming his way on a daily basis. Especially once he undergoes an awakening of sorts, and tries to actually put his political career and his remaining time on Earth to some use.

  

  As the prime minister's guardian spirit, she struggles to protect the prime minister and battle the ocean of malice that just keeps getting sent his way. Like at one point, the prime minister goes off to inspect a nuclear reactor and as he's going along on this tour of sorts, Riyon is of course right there along with him and she is engaged in a goddamned BATTLE.

  

  This of course finally brings me to the main character of the manga and the human that Riyon becomes assigned to as their guardian spirit. The fictionalized Prime Minister of Japan who was in office at the time of March 11, 2011, Kasuga Soichiro. You're probably curious why I threw out an actual date. Well, I've already sort of touched upon it but. The goal Kasuga decides on after undergoing his awakening by meeting his guardian spirit is that he wishes to steer Japan towards denuclearization. Why is that?

  Well, he wishes to prevent any future disasters such as the 2011 earthquake which resulted in the cooling system of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant failing. That's right. This manga is also partly about THE REAL LIFE COSTLIEST NATURAL DISASTER IN HISTORY.

  So you have this fictionalized version of the Prime Minister who is just absolutely fucked up after this happened, and the fucking entire country hates him or openly mocks him and wants him to resign.

  

  Kasuga sort of then has a near death experience, but Riyon of course saves him, and this event causes him to actually be able to see her and sort of gives him psychic powers of a sort. This leads to Kasuga deciding he'd turn his life around and try and actually change Japan for the better. Even if it meant using his psychic powers and his connection to his guardian spirit to do it.

  To conclude on the Prime Minister, I need to say that he does perhaps one of the genuinely most badass things I've seen a character do in a manga in a long while. What, does he defeat one hundred enemies in a single battle while wounded and alone? No. Does he defeat like seventy five, essentially ending an entire school of samurai? No. So what does Kasuga do? He drinks a glass of water.

  

  Finally, we have Kubo Kouji. I don't want to go too far into his character, because I loved him from the moment he was introduced, but let's just say he's an opponent of Kasuga and Riyon. He greatly disagrees with what they're doing or rather how they're doing it, and he along with others set out to stop them. He is perhaps one of the coolest antagonists I've come across in a while, and not only is he super fucking determined to stop the "good side" but he genuinely has completely understandable reasons why. But he is still essentially the walking embodiment of evil, and he is even at one point outright straight up compared to the radiation of the nuclear energy that Kasuga is trying so hard to bring an end to.

  

  ---

  Conclusion

  I fucking loved this manga through and through. I could not recommend it enough, to the point this is the second time I'm giving my score to it in this review, which is in fact again, a 10 out of 10.

  I have nothing else to say other than absolutely go read it.

  
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• 

  FateXBlood

  70/100
  Politics and Supernatural. Very interesting.

  *Note: Includes spoilers.

  Hito Hitori Futari

  If you translate it to English, it would most likely mean "One Person as Two", which in a way, is the main plot of the story itself.

  Hito Hitori Futari or HHF for short, begins with a view of the Realm of the Dead, the lowest realm of the Spiritual World. Here, spirits are educated for their roles and given knowledge for them to move onto either realm above or be a guardian spirit below on Earth. In the midst of this, we get our main character — Riyon who has been skipping classes to play Othello with a Sage. As the story progresses, Riyon is asked to become a Guardian Spirit of a human being and is given the freedom to choose any human as she likes. As such, Riyon chooses a human being in hopes that she wouldn't have to spend much time on Earth as a guardian spirit. And from here on begins her journey of being the Guardian Spirit of none other than the Prime Minister of Japan — Kasuga Souichiro.

  That is pretty much the premise of the story and now I am going to discuss some points which unfortunately made me rate the story as 7/10 and not higher. So, let's begin.

  

  This is my first time reading a manga that focuses on Politics but also adds a supernatural element to it. The story mainly focuses on Riyon and the Prime Minister as they continue to play a role in the world of Politics surrounding Japan. The story's demographic is Seinen and I believe that it has lived up to it. The author has done an excellent job of the flow of the story as Psychological as possible, as while reading it, it feels really fresh. But even after doing so much, there are some key elements that are highly missing.

  After Kasuga gets psychic powers via which he is able to see Riyon and even read the minds of people by touching them, he treats this new power of his as a gift and wishes to do everything to save Japan and make the place better. In theory, this might sound fascinating, but in practical terms, it's very difficult to achieve. In the world of politics, it's often known that there are various people that are constantly targeted either for good or bad purposes. As such, Kasuga is no exception. After receiving psychic powers, he is then targeted by a political member of the opposition who partners up with someone that can use Spiritual Abilities in the most deadly way possible — Kubo Kouji, the main antagonist of the story.

  In politics, we can assume there are often enemies and that's also what I thought, but the story limits the antagonist to Kubo mainly. The opposition is very weak, the members of the PM's party play a very little role and most of all, foreign involvement is very less aside from a few mentions. The story is mostly centered around the PM and it seems that nobody can force him even for medical treatment after he drank highly contaminated radioactive water. It seems to me that the writer decided not to focus on the background much and just kept things as small as possible, like a dream world.

  Actually, there's not much harm in keeping the cast less, but if you look at real-life politics, there are various members that are constantly active and comment upon every little action.

  

  For example, even after the Core Government was formed, which comprises of only 5 members and acts as a secret government working with the Prime Minister in the center, you'd expect somebody else to know about it and talk about it. While news reporters did mention they know about it, nobody did anything. It felt as if nobody could be bothered with a secret government at all. The opposition and not even the own members of the party said anything about it. It felt as if it just existed and everyone just went along with it.

  Now, let me talk about the opposition or the sort of character that would go against the Prime Minister in politics — Izumi Daiki. I believe the author just didn't know what to do with him. Seriously, I'm not sure if he's even relevant to the story at hand. In the beginning, it was pretty clear that he was going against PM Kasuga so he himself could be the PM but after collaborating with Kubo, his character development failed and he did absolutely nothing. The story kept showing him in the sense that he's just there. This is something which didn't interest me much.

  

  Since the story is centered around Guardians Spirits, let me talk about it a bit. Basically, Earth is between 2 realms, the Spiritual World and the Dark World. There are times when malice comes from the Dark World and harms humans. As a result, Souls are sent to each human being who acts as a Guardian Spirit to protect them from being a victim of the Black Balls or evil. To form the Core Government, the Prime Minister consults with Riyon to check if the members have strong Guardian Spirits or not, which they have. These guardians can see the lifespan of the human they chose to protect as well as how much evil has currently possessed them or is trying to enter them and do their best to repel it.

  

  That much is for the story, now let's talk about the artwork. I believe Tsutomu Takahashi is a good artist as we can see very good double-spread works of his and enjoy them. His drawings of the Spirit and Dark world are just amazing. He can also draw thrilling images repeatedly in a sense that will keep the reader interested.

  

  Unfortunately, there is not an official English release of this manga so I had to read scanlations of it, but surprisingly, the scanlation has good double-spreads which the Raw doesn't. A bit weird, but it's still readable and I recommend it to people.

  Oh right, I forgot to mention that the story mainly focuses on the actual 2011 Daiichi Fukushima Power Plant Disaster.

  

  Basically, as Kasuga was the PM when the incident happened, he has this obligation to stop another event like that from happening, less it makes living in Japan much more difficult. So he plans to take action against it and announces the path to Denuclearization. This part of the story is very important as it can be seen as the main story itself. But again, it lacks various responses. If a country decides to suddenly shut down all of the nuclear power plants, it's going to be massive global news, but we are not shown any response from outside or even neighbors. It's as if the author didn't want to include any sort of opinion from the outside world to keep readers focused on Japan only. I personally believe this was a good arc as I was able to educate myself on the harms of radiation and how deadly it can be, but was a bit disappointed with the lack of responses.

  As for the characters, I believe the main focus is mainly on PM and his cabinet along with Riyon and the antagonist Kubo. Each character is good but there are some whose potential could not be displayed as they were simply left out. Nonetheless, it is okay.

  Lastly, I would like to comment that HHF is good for a read. I don't think it's going to be a massive hit if it becomes popular, but it's definitely something you can pick up and read. It's a good psychological manga and the work is good.

  
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• 

  unspecifieduser

  40/100
  It has a great premise, but the specifics are all uninteresting. The most preachy manga I've seen.

  I was drawn to this manga because of the premise. A dead girl serves as a guardian angel to the Prime Minister of Japan, who will die in less than two years and will try to do his best for his country in the time he has left. It’s interesting, original, and sparks the mind with the possibilities that open up from it. The best thing I can say for it is that it is, indeed, creative and new.

  It’s also a relatively smooth read; easy to go from one chapter to the next. It doesn’t necessarily hook you into needing to know what happens, but you can coast through the story with little effort.

  Visually, it’s competent. The characters can look a little messy, and the perspectives and environments aren’t the most appealing. There are some good more abstract pages, with darkness splashing against light in expressive ways.

  But despite all the ideas this manga has, few of them are executed well. There’s a constant sense of awkwardness when a manga is trying incredibly hard to make an idea impact the reader, but it just fails to land.

  The main characters are decent. Kasuga’s boldness and insights are engaging, and Riyon is likeable enough. Their relationship never gets the nuanced development that it would have deserved, being at the core of the story. Their relationship never seems much deeper than a simple father-daughter-like one, with some shallow themes of self-sacrifice and hiding pain for each others’ sakes.

  The political side of the story, which initially excited me, was perhaps the most woefully underdeveloped part. Kasuga has a couple of good speeches, and one excellent symbolic action taken to inspire the people of japan. Those points were memorable, but aren’t very much in an 80+ chapter manga. There’s a severe lack of interesting interpersonal reactions, political strategies, or even just characters persuading each other of things. Nobody gets into serious debates or conflicts about political issues. The most you’ll typically see is brief shots of people on the news shouting their disagreement with Kasuga, but there’s never any direct back and forth between people who disagree on things. This aspect is so shallow that I would absolutely not recommend this manga to anyone looking for an interesting political story.

  The “magic” in the story feels entirely unnecessary. I think it should have kept the mystical side of things to Riyon’s existence and presence in Kasuga’s life, developed more of how they supported each other, and shown detailed political maneuvering as he accomplished his goals. Instead, there’s a poorly developed magic system of light and dark energy invading people’s minds. The way that it affects people’s thoughts feels poorly thought out, and how it’s utilized feels unbalanced and contrived for conflict. There’s also Kasuga gaining the power to read the thoughts of those he shakes hands with. Imagine all of the interesting political things that could be done with such an ability. You will see none of them in this manga.

  This brings me to one of the two worst aspects of this manga: The one who uses that magic system. The villain, Kubo. Put simply, he’s unabashedly edgy to the point of ridiculousness. He constantly focuses the story around himself, and it hurts it. It’s a shame that the story found his exploits more interesting than actual politics. There were points where I thought that he must have been thrust into a story by an editor who doubted that the manga would be considered interesting enough if it was just about politics. I became less confident in this theory as I got further in the story, and there’s no way of knowing for sure if something like that happened. But his place in this manga feels entirely undeserved.

  He has his tragic backstory, meant to justify his pessimistic and antagonistic worldview. The backstory itself honestly isn’t bad. But all of his actions in the present are motivated by a painful-to-read edgy darkness, where he wants to prove love is fake and good people aren’t allowed to try to be heroes, and that using powers similar to his own powers of darkness needs to be punished. I finished the manga, and I honestly couldn’t tell you why he even cared about what Kasuga was trying to accomplish. I guess it was supposed to be a need to prove his worldview right, by destroying one who went against it, but frankly it was just a mess.

  Most of the real conflict comes from him using his dark magicks to injure and kill people at a distance. It’s not a very interesting setup. There’s little the protagonists can meaningfully do against it, so there’s no back-and-forth of strategies.

  The overall story conflict might have been better if it actually focused on his employer, who originally involved him in the battle against Kasuga. A young ambitious politician who wanted to fight against what he saw as an old, incompetent prime minister. Unfortunately, his role in the story was relegated to doing almost nothing other than tell Kubo they need to do more next. And eventually have some kind of forced “redemption” that didn’t feel justified or explored in any way. The manga might have explained it at the start, but I can confidently say I don’t have the slightest idea why he wanted to fight against Kasuga either. That’s how little it mattered to the story. No political disagreements or even disagreements in philosophy on what a politician can or should do. He didn’t even provide an opposition on the main political conflict in the story.

  And, as I get to that conflict, I need to make something clear: This is all my opinion. Obviously, that applies to this entire review, but this deserves special emphasis. Special emphasis because it’s about real-life political issues. Something where good and well-intentioned people can reasonably disagree.

  I am not Japanese. I have never lived in Japan. I am not an expert on Japanese political issues. Japanese people may have more informed views on the relevant arguments, and they have a real, personal stake on the outcomes. I recommend anybody interested does their own research on this and takes neither my nor the manga’s word for things.

  I am only here to express my personal reaction at the political ideas the story presents, how it presents them, and how that affects the overall experience.

  Hito Hitori Futari is astoundingly and unabashedly anti-nuclear energy, to the point where I consistently cringed reading it.

  That’s the mission Kasuga gives himself, that he wants to accomplish in his time left: To set Japan on a course of dismantling all of its nuclear facilities. Frightened of a disaster like Fukushima happening again, or a second disaster making the situation at Fukushima worse, he wants Japan to give it up entirely, accepting a more limited lifestyle, in order to avoid any risk of making the country uninhabitable.

  It’s certainly noble and well-intentioned. In my subjective view (do your own research!), it’s also utterly ridiculous. Nuclear power is perfectly capable of being safe. As far as I’m aware, the disaster at Fukushima only occurred because of atrocious safety oversights that completely failed to adhere to standards. Furthermore, while nuclear waste is an issue, it’s a much smaller issue than climate change, which unlike coal and oil, nuclear power does not contribute to.

  The story ignores all of this. In its eyes, nuclear power is an evil. It is nothing but a danger to the public, an inevitable source of disasters, and something that the Japanese people would love to be freed from if they only had hope for it being possible.

  Counter-arguments are never suggested, because they don’t exist here. Oh, the people may have to give up their cell phones, but we never see anybody struggle with this. Nor do we anyone meaningfully disagree. There are a few moments where rival politicians (who don’t matter to the story) shout that it isn’t possible, and nuclear companies certainly have no intention to close. That’s about it. The story once felt like it might go the route of pretending that nuclear companies were simply greedily taking advantage of the people, and needed to be ousted for the country’s good. This isn’t the reality of the issue, but the manga didn’t even go for it. The opposition, functionally, had no presence, because the manga had no intention of exploring the ideas of those who might not want to get rid of a massive source of electricity.

  I wouldn’t even recommend this to anyone who agrees with the manga’s stance, as there’s nothing of substance it says about it. No exploration of the nuances of the issues. There is, however, an absurdly hamfisted comparison of the evil psychic powers to nuclear energy — supposedly, they’re both evil sources of power that tempt man yet never should have been touched.

  This is not a story. This is propaganda. Propaganda that presents its protagonist as a noble hero for devoting himself to the cause that the author clearly believes you should agree with. The politics are, in my view, ridiculous, but it's not really about the politics. It's about the fact that reading this manga feels like being preached at. There is no subtlety to the ideas. It doesn't ask the reader to think for themselves or come to their own conclusions. It forces its ideas like a screaming baby you can't ignore, pretending its ideas are original or thought-provoking.

  Despite everything bad I have to say about this manga, it’s not the worst thing ever. Like I said at the beginning, it’s both original, and very readable and engaging. This is a manga that may disappoint you, but probably won’t bore you. Nor is every writing decision it makes bad. There are plenty of moments over the course of the journey that are decently interesting, plenty of things the main characters do that are likeable. Kasuga’s acceptance of his fate and progression of his quest are engaging enough. But these things are less interesting to explain, and far less impactful on the story, than everything it does wrong.

  I would not recommend this manga. But I hope the best for the author and his skills, because he’s capable of far more than those who limit themselves to the generic cliches we’ve seen too many times. As long as he keeps from focusing his stories on real-world political issues, and learns some god forsaken subtlety.

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