Three works by Machiko Kyou
I was searching for interesting looking josei manga, and I came across an author whose stuff I immediately fell in love with.
U: I'll start off with the weakest one (but still good), in my humble opinion. I remember coming across this manga when searching through the Manga Erotics F magazine, that happens to publish a lot of manga I really like. The premise sounded okay enough; a girl with a twin sister happens to make a clone of herself, but the clone begins to surpass the original, then I saw a "Girls Love" tag and I felt like that would throw it into a direction I don't like (haha self-cest), so I decided against reading it. Turns out, there's 0 GL in this manga, and the genre on MAL is completely incorrect? Unless I missed something crucial lmao. The premise and the message of the manga is interesting, however I felt the storytelling was a bit weaker in this one compared to the other two. I liked the idea of "the copy begins to surpass the original, begins to see herself as superior only to begin feeling inferior to the original's twin sister - who the original always felt inferior to". God that sounds like a lot, and it really is. It's why I usually stay away from manga featuring clones, they make my head hurt. Reminded me a bit of Mikake no Nijuusei, but it was definitely darker.
Cocoon: This one made me cry, and I don't cry when reading manga that often. The manga is a fictional retelling of a real event, the Himeyuri students. If you don't know what they were, give it a deeper read after finishing the manga. Extremely sad and depressing, it deals with the horrors of war seen through the eyes of young girls, who were basically sent out into the frontlines without them knowing, under a false pretense. They were hopeful and unassuming because of the propaganda they've been fed which makes the fate all the more harrowing. We also get to see some of the "wonders" of war, such as men turning into animals and assaulting girls because they've got nothing to lose. The cute art combined with gore does a great job here at making you feel despair.
Mitsuami no Kamisama: My favourite of the three, this manga is about a post-disaster society but the intricacies of it I will not get into as I feel like it would spoil too much. I loved the personification of everyday objects (especially because it's a real life habit I have lol), giving them little storylines with meaningful messages that tie into the main theme. It felt like reading a childrens book, and I mean this in a very positive way. The main theme seems to be "if your purpose was to be used - would you fulfill it for the good of others?". The ending felt vague in the sense that nothing happened, but I think it felt very complete because of the MC's decision, therefore we don't need to see the rest. I love endings like these, and I love the type of worldbuilding where we're only given bits and pieces, kind of similar to Haibane Renmei.
The first thing that drew me to her manga was the art, which is simple and soft because of the shading and the rounded shapes. It definitely resembles art meant for children, which adds a layer of innocence to her poignant stories. All in all I really enjoyed these and I'm glad I read them. One of her other translated works *Mikako-san* is 221 chapters long, so I might tackle it at some point.
