Melancholia

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If we pretend other manga are like beautiful paintings, this one is like a puzzle, which you assemble piece by piece until you get the full picture. Jus like a normal puzzle, you may have some bigger gratification depending on how good is the final product(which in this case is pretty good) but most of your enjoyement will probably come in realizing how one part connects with another, and believe me, this work does this amazingly. I found myself rereading entire chapters just to be sure I catched all the references. This enjoyement only increases thanks to the characters and dialogues, which are very well ... written.
If you are a fan of interconnected stories and/or puzzles, this manga is for you.

Melancholia takes place in an apocalypse; a comet is projected to collide into Earth, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. Media about the apocalypse has existed since the beginning of time, and it's interesting because of the themes that it deals with. How would you react if you knew that you had a limited time to live? How would you feel knowing that nobody would live to remember you, that any legacy you have will be erased, that society is about to come to an abrupt end and that nothing anybody has done would be preserved? How would you cope with ... your goals and aspirations becoming not only unattainable, but meaningless? Would you feel despair? Regret? Maybe you'd even feel liberated? Melancholia doesn't answer, nor does it even consider any of these questions. In spite of the looming existential threat to humanity, people continue to live life. In the universe of Melancholia, just months before the world ends, there's a new item on the McDonald's menu and Shounen Jump still publishes every week, almost as if nothing was going on. Melancholia is about joy, sadness, friendship, and hardship all in the face of the end of the world.

Melancholia is a collection of loosely connected short stories. Each chapter presents different characters facing different problems, but not without some quirky details. For example, one story is about a mangaka with writer's block, but he also has a sentient prosthetic arm. Another story is about a mermaid who wishes she could run a marathon (but she has no legs because she's a mermaid). Douman Seiman is an expert at using situational irony; even though the premise of his stories are already bizarre, the way the characters respond to things and the way conflicts are presented and resolved will still manage to betray your expectations. But in spite of the supernatural occurrences and strange characters, the conflicts the characters experience and the emotions they feel are undeniably human, and are deeply relatable.

Tonally, Melancholia is a rollercoaster of emotions. Gags are often haphazardly strewn between tragedy and melodrama, and many of the stories feel inconclusive. Seiman's expressive, cartoonishly goofy artstyle greatly contributes to the surrealism of Melancholia. At the end of the day, Melancholia manages to be tons of fun to read while still feeling meaningful.

What ties Melancholia together is it's meta-plot. The stories are related to one another in ways that are always unintentional, and sometimes meaningless. Each story sets in motion the next one, almost like a Rude Goldberg machine of stories, which ultimately sets in motion the meta-plot that gives the story as a whole its conclusion. No single character ever grasps or understands the impact of what they participated in, because each character's own story is meaningful on its own. It kind of shows that even though you don't know how things are going to end up, even if the world is going to end, it's okay to live in the moment. That you absolutely can triumph over adversity, experience sorrow and joy, and live life to its fullest even when you don't know if tomorrow will come. Only the reader has the perspective to see how everything ties together, and it is truly beautiful to see it all come together. Melancholia is, simply put, the most elegant take on the meaning of life that I've come across.

I am surprised that there have been no reviews yet, especially from the fans of Dowman Sayman. I think this manga is one of the best of Dowman Sayman's works, on the level of Voynich Hotel.

This review may contain minor spoilers, but I won't reveal anything major.

You might have heard of an English movie called 'Melancholia', which came out in 2011. In a nutshell, is the story of two sisters and their lives when they discover that Earth is going to collide with a massive planet called Melancholia. Replace the sisters with a huge cast of characters, and swap 'planet' with 'comet', and you get ... the basic setting for the manga. I haven't seen the movie, but as far as I can tell it revolves heavily around depression, which is much different from the manga.

Story: 9/10
The story is subdivided into many short stories, which all seem independent at first, but start merging together towards the end. This is kinda similar to Voynich Hotel, but the stories being intertwined is not evident from the start. I would rate the independent short stories at the beginning 8/10, but towards the end the story just gets so much better and interesting. In the climax we see each story culminating towards the ending, and it is very satisfying.

Art: 8/10
Dowman Sayman's art style is very simplistic. However, I would say that it does the job very well for such an abstract light-hearted-but-not-really story. Now, I am not someone who judges a series heavily based on art (I am more of a story and characters guy) so giving it an 8 would be appropriate.

Character: 9/10
All of Sayman's manga are heavily character driven, this one being no exception. We have got a wide ensemble of characters: child chess prodigies, guys fascinated with Rube Goldberg machines (which are pretty cool imo), hikikomoris, talking cats, tsuchinoko, aliens, hitmen, policemen, manga artists, gamers, superheroes, vampires, mermaids, eccentric people, insane people, lovesick people. There's also a guest appearance from the maids of the Voynich Hotel. This might seem overwhelming for 26 chapters, but it works out very well. All characters have a conclusively ending story arc. Also, the characters which are recurring do undergo some sort of development. I wont go into the details, as they may be spoilery, but if you enjoyed the characters from Voynich Hotel or Nickeodeon, you will certainly enjoy this manga.

Enjoyment: 10/10
Enjoyment is something I hold in high regards while rating a manga (yes I am not really a critic). And all chapters of this manga, especially the end chapters, were thoroughly enjoyable. Easily 10/10 for enjoyment.

Overall: 9/10

If you enjoyed Dowman Sayman's other works, I highly recommend giving this manga a read.