Houseki no Kuni
Land of the Lustrous

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it's over. it's finally over.

what started out as a charming, albeit slightly unsettling, story of cute rock humans fighting fluffy moon aliens quickly became one of the wildest, strangest and most provocative plots i've read yet in manga. seriously, this manga gets really weird. not too incomprehensible, nor pretentiously abstract, but if you want a simple action mystery story Land of the Lustrous probably isn't for you.

PLOT:
plot is good. it's not what i'd say is the selling point of LotL, but it's definitely paced well enough to never feel like a scene drags too long. the plot gets really weird halfway through, and some might ... complain that the second half feels extremely disjointed but i dont know, it works for me.

i will say, there's a portion in the middle of the manga where it does get a bit repetitive and it starts to drag a little. this is due to the setting that the manga confines itself in, which does start to get stale after awhile. thankfully there's a change in setting soon enough, and that's when things start to progress again.

CHARACTERS:
the protagonist (phos) is handedly one of the best ive seen. many amazing protagonists in manga are unlikable or not particularly interesting in the begin compared to the path they will later undertake (i.e. eren, thorfinn) but phos is immediately charming and interesting from the start. there's a sense of incompleteness in phos, which makes their development one of the most fascinating ive seen done in manga.

the other characters are pretty solid too. most of the Gems are dysfunctional in their own way, which makes for an interesting character study on each of them. they get ample page time to establish themselves, and overall i have no issues with them. they do feel set up to flesh out phos further at times, but i really have no issue with that in a manga that is laser focused on its protagonist's development as LotL.

ART:
there are two kinds of amazing art in manga. on one hand, you have the berserks, the vagabonds. those are meticulously drawn to perfection, trying to capture the human anatomy as accurately and as realistically as possible with the pen. on the other, you have LotL.

ichikawa excels at creating evocative, beautiful art while achieving a sense of minimalism in her art. there's no intricate shading, no miura-esque every-pixel-must-be-perfect philosophy behind her art style, but her impressive use of negative space, symmetry in her page compositions and panels are simply incredible. every panel flows seamlessly to the next, and it makes for a great reading experience.

only nitpick is that it can be quite tough to differentiate the Gems, especially at first.

TONE:
i love how bleak this manga can get. i also how love how hilarious it is.

the humour is a constant in the series. unlike many manga out there, where humour is often highly exaggerated and slapstick, LotL's humour is often more quippy, and even in many occasions, pretty damn dark. it's never too frequent to become grating, and the jokes tend to land well.

THEMES:
existentialism and a whole lot of buddhist motifs. sounds pretentious i know, but don't worry, ichikawa does not shove it down your throat to the point where it affects the plot. ive never read a manga with themes that get as existential and abstract as LotL, and as someone who does believe somewhat in Buddhism it is handled in a really interesting manner without getting preachy.

OVERALL:
also the ending's good. it's not anything mindblowing, but it's a fitting, beautiful ending for our protagonist.

a must-read if you're someone looking to read all the classics in the medium. i can promise that you will find NOTHING like LotL, love it or hate it. an imperfect masterpiece.

9/10

First of all, I wanna make clear that this manga is very enjoayble, I literally read almost all of it in 1 day, of how good it was to read. BUT, it has a lot of problems(to me) that makes it not as good as I would like it to be.The first problem is, the characters. It would be a lie if i say they're "empty" or something like that, but, for me it's pretty clear of how most of them just exists in order to develop Phos, more than themselves(like Antarcticite). Dia was the one that i was looking for big development but as ... i said, besides Phos, other characters don't really have that much of screen time, or deep development(but they do have development don't get me wrong, but not as deep as i wished them to have), so in the end i wasn't even thinking about her anymore.
Second of all, i don't really like the way they treat the emotional parts. Mainly because of the dialogues. The're too simple, and if that wansn't enough, these emotional scenes are always short, so I can't really have time to feel any deep emotion, and i really don't like how serious situations and silly ones are interspersed. It's sad because the art alone itself, is more deeper than with dialougues.
And last of all is, i think the concept of the series is perfect, but the execution is not what I was looking for, i truly don't like how they do the time-skips, and how the unniverse is not very explorable.

But, even with these defects I still give this a 8.0, because it defintely is above medium media and I really love the concept, and like I said it's truly enjoayble to read, so i respect these qualities a lot, but even with giving it a 8 i still have mixed feelings.

[Spoilers]

Seriously, seriously, don't read this. It starts off strong, with an intriguing setting and a loveable main character (Phos). The character interactions are fantastic and there is a sense of mystery and melancholy to the whole story. There are various relationships Phos makes that are set up such for future development in different directions. However... (massive spoilers below)

At a certain point within the story, the author decides that Phos needs to suffer and that everyone should turn on them, and makes no effort to make this happening believable. Every single character who Phos has interacted with, befriended, had fun with, fought with, bonded over lost ... comrades with, tried to help, just completely gives zero fucks about Phos within a matter of days. For no reason. Just to get some dumb plot point across. And none of them ever care again. All the relationships, just poof, gone permanently, because the author had a stupid plotline they wanted. Which itself, was really just an excuse to make Phos suffer to begin with. It completely belies the narrative up to that point, just to make you feel bad. Horrible writing, I sincerely regret reading it.