Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Impression: Please Save My Earth 6

Volume 6 picks up the slack of volume 5 and I find myself engrossed in the story once more.


Summary


Rin decides to cancel his engagement to Alice, which causes Alice to make sure he is ok. When the two of them talk alone, Rin speaks oddly, stating in his dreams he is alone once more.
Furthermore, Rin's teacher notices the boy has exceptional talent. He shows Rin's mother a poem he wrote and tells her that not matter how one looks at this poem, it cannot be one an eight year old would write.

Meanwhile the other Moon dreams are becoming suspicious of "Shion" after Rin tells them he broke off his engagement to Alice due to "Shion"'s insistence. During the meeting they recollect that they had some passwords for the Moon Base and the general events that happened during their last days on the Moon Base.

Later, Jinpachi confronts Haruhiko about Rin's cancellation of his engagement to Alice. Naturally, Haruhiko has no idea what Jinpachi is talking about and gets up to leave. When Jinpachi holds him back, Haruhiko slaps him and tells him to "try being me and see how you like it".

Back at Kyoto, Mr.Tamura gets a call from Hokuto saying that his mother wants to meet up with him. During their meeting, Hokuto's mother talks about her other son, Mikuro, who also has ESP. After she finishes her story, she asks Mr.Tamura not to forget that "S" may be in need of his help as well.

At their next meeting, Daisuke has come up with a rough outline of what happened during their previous lives. Using the outline, the others begin to fill in the missing information and recall how Mokuren was a special "Kiche Sarjalian" and she performed a special dance and song at all national holidays.

The next day at school, Jinpachi tells Issei that the tree by the window where Alice sings has grown a lot. Issei agrees with him and Jinpachi says they must convince Alice to come back to the Moon Dreamers meetings. Issei says he has school council duties, so it falls on Jinpachi to convince her. Jinpachi passes Alice in the hallway and calls to her that she doesn't have to ignore him and apologizes for his previous behavoir. He tells Alice he knows why the Ginko tree by the music room has been looking really healthy and has been growing and asks her to come back to the meetings. Alice agrees to come back to the meetings.

Meanwhile, Haruhiko is at an aquarium, while recollecting his life as Shukaido, a stranger bumps into him. The stranger hands him a book and leaves. Inside the book he finds a warning about teleportation.



My Thoughts


Last volume was rather slow as I noted, but volume six really picks up the pace. Truth be told, volume 5 was partly to blame for me taking so long to get to volume six. While five was by no means bad, it wasn't as attention grabbing as some other manga at the time, which caused me to shift my priorities to other titles. I do regret that now, since volume six has shown me why I fell in love with this series in the first place: the story telling is solid; Hiwatari-san moves seamlessly between the past on the Moon and the present on Earth, she gives us bits and pieces of the story on the Moon, which only increased my curiosity without showing me everything at once and thus keeping me in suspense. Likewise, the character development was really good this volume as we get to see more of Issei's inner turmoil and we finally get a look into Sakura/Shusuran, but most importantly, we get to see behind Rin's mask for once and learn some more about the other Moon Scientists.

Issei is currently my favourite character. I love how he struggles against his past, and just in general he is quite likeable. Rin, although not my favourite, is quickly becoming my reason for reading Please Save My Earth. I'm genuinely intrigued with his demons and how he appears to be walking a thin line between sanity and insanity. I currently don't hate any of the characters, although I do wish Alice, Diasuke, and Jinpachi would get stronger characterizations. Alice, in particular, really needs it since she is suppose to be the main character.

I was surprised that in one of the side notes, Hiwatari-san wrote that people are calling Haruhiko a cry baby. I'm not a fan of frail characters, but Haruhiko isn't really frail, he's acting quite strongly for the situation he is in. He cries because of everything happening in his life. It's basically being torn apart for mistakes he didn't do (his past self did them) and he has no one to give him moral support. It's kind of hypocritical really, since Alice isn't being called a cry baby but she was crying through volume 1 and 2 because of what happened to Rin (in a situation similar to Haru's, where she had little moral support with the whole school against her and Rin's family despising her). And just like with Haru, I think they both reacted realistically and strongly for the situation they were in. *Sigh* And people think I'm hard on characters. I'm actually not too hard so long as the characters act with some realism (also known as, characters have common sense that *most* people have).

Ah, but I'm rambling off track now. So I'll just conclude this with saying that volume six of Please Save My Earth really impressed me and I am looking forward to reading volume seven. :)

~Joanna

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