Murasakiiro no Qualia (Qualia the Purple)

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Japanese: 紫色のクオリア

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Type: Manga

Volumes: 3

Chapters: 21

Status: Finished

Published: Jan 27, 2011 to Aug 27, 2013

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Dengeki Daioh

Authors: Ueo, Hisamitsu (Story), Tsunashima, Shirou (Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.83¹ (scored by 3,586 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1138²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1596

Members: 11,098

Favorites: 316

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7.83

Ranked #1138Popularity #1596Members 11,098

MangaDengeki DaiohUeo, Hisamitsu (Story), Tsunashima, Shirou (Art)

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Volumes: /3

Chapters: /21

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Synopsis

Despite her harmless exterior, Yukari Marii, hides a deep, dark secret: her pretty purple eyes see all living beings as robots. Initially considering it to be nothing more than a quirky eccentricism, her friend Manabu "Gaku" Hatou soon realizes there's more truth to Yukari's words than she first thought. Despite her weirdness, Yukari's diminutive cuteness instills in Hatou a deep desire to protect her. In contrast, Yukari considers Hatou a "super-modifiable all-purpose robot."

Yet, Yukari's starkly unique view on the world has made her a lonely person, even causing her old friend Nanami Tenjou to act cruelly towards her. After an incident, Hatou finds out that Yukari is not the only one with a unique sight, termed a "Qualia." When Yukari is recruited into an institution for children with Qualia, Hatou is soon plunged into a conspiracy she must claw her way out of.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Alternative version:

Murasakiiro no Qualia

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Characters

Hatou, Manabu

Main

Marii, Yukari

Main

Foyle, Alice

Supporting

Tenjou, Nanami

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

Mar 22, 2016

tomateunmate

Recommended

This review contains some spoilers since you can't explain why this manga is good without falling there. I don't think that general ideas can really spoil the levels this manga reaches but if you want them to hit at full force I'd recommend that you read it and stick to it until you get how distant the start and the end are.

The main issue is that it can be divided in two very distinct parts, and even if both of them are strong the turn it takes really hurts both. The first part is a nice classroom sort-of-yuri comedy/drama. A regular girl falls in friendship ... with the weirdo who sees people as robots (not in an utilitarian sense, completely literal to the booster pack and exchangeable parts). People stand in their way, problems arise, some drama, they build gunpla and eventually manage to become dear friends and even connect with other people.

The second half, though, is full blown sci-fi of the best kind. A small element is incorporated in a regular setting and it's slowly expanded until the point it breaks the universe. The escalation this second half has is incredible and it deserves to be seen just for how far it goes. I didn't exaggerate when I said it breaks the universe. It's an author exploring a premise to every possible degree, something that you can see many others completely failing to do while getting praised just for the initial concept.

The problem is that both parts don't really need the other. When I finished it I checked a couple of one-shot stories set in the initial part and I had already forgotten that this had been a happy school days gag manga. It took me to write this review to remember the drama from the past that closes that part of the story. I could only remember the last chapters, and when I first saw a recommendation for this was through a page of nearly the end. It was basically luck that I had forgotten why I was reading it and stuck for the girls in highschool beginning. I assume this comes from the original LNs and I really like the idea of the author first making a funny high school story just to hit the readers with a completely different sequel. But when you read the manga you don't have that clear distinction.

The art isn't too good although the gunpla look great and in the second part it's up to par to make the reader understand the story. Over all it feels like a subpar mangaka adapting a cult classic.

In many elements it resembles Madoka, it surprised me that the LN had come a year before that anime. They were probably responding to a cultural desire of almost-yuri + expansive concepts that affects the universe. Just like you have half a dozen Harry Potters in the couple of years before and after the book came out. In any case, I'd say that if you enjoyed Madoka you'll probably like this too.

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Mar 27, 2018

RoxRobstah

Not Recommended

If you're interested in really heady sci-fi and philosophical concepts, this might be worth checking out if that's all you're looking for. To say the least, Murasakiiro no Qualia is ambitious. After a somewhat slow start, it blows up into hyperspeed in directions you might not expect and never stops. The best part of the manga is seeing what insanity the author has thought up next, but in the process it loses a lot of what would make that kind of story interesting in the first place, making the whole thing feel clumsy, rushed, and full of unrealized potential.

This manga is apparently a novel adaptation, ... and it shows. It's very text-heavy and ultimately prefers to tell rather than show, which hurts in the manga format. So much of the manga is spent explaining and discussing scientific theories, and in the latter half, an astonishingly small portion of the manga is spent showing what happens in the story. Instead, a few panels may represent what happens, then some textboxes will gloss over a few points and move on. It gets old really fast, and it becomes impossible to connect with the MC's struggles. Eventually, it doesn't feel like reading a story anymore--but a story about a story, and it's as dull as it sounds.

Now, if you have already read the manga and say, "But that's the point of the story!" I realize that, but that alone doesn't justify its execution. If you set out to write your story in a boring manner and succeed, the story isn't any less boring. The author/artist could have conveyed the story in a number of more interesting ways, such as expanding on ideas that could have been their own story arc but instead were only given a few panels. The MC has a lot of focus, so perhaps it would been more interesting to focus on other characters' perspectives, providing new insight on an otherwise sterile thought experiment of a manga.

The story is also pretty bad at justifying its use of these concepts, which creates plot holes. It's most easily seen in the latter half, when the author decides to take increasingly daring leaps of logic in order to keep the plot interesting, but even without that, there are times when the characters seem to know way more than they should, or they're more right than they should be. The strength of your suspension of disbelief will matter here. For most of those little instances, I don't mind that middle school students happen to know a little about some weird theories, but I would like to see more into how they came about these theories or how those theories affect their lives, rather than taking it all for granted.

But while I think most of these problems occur in the latter half, I would rate the manga even lower if it didn't have those things. The beginning part is just kind of boring without any noteworthy points. Meanwhile, though the latter half has its fair share of issues, there are some interesting ideas that are thrown around played with, and seeing the author attempt to bring those ideas together into a semi-coherent story was entertaining.

The ideas themselves are interesting, but the way they are presented is not. There aren't that many manga like this...but I would still look elsewhere for heady sci-fi stuff.

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Oct 13, 2018

Thedude3445

Recommended

Spoiler

This is probably the first manga I have ever read that actually uses sequential art to its inherent advantage to the point that it may be impossible to translate faithfully to any other medium*. Most mangas, either by uncreativity, too much serialization, its close connection to anime or light novels-- SOMETHING-- are held back a bit and rarely use the same techniques that top-tier Western comic books have mastered over the years. Qualia the Purple, though? It gets it.

This manga makes heavy utilization of things like image repetition, panel layout order, and nonlinearity, the sort of stuff only sequential art can pull off, all ...

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Poll: Murasakiiro no Qualia Chapter 18 Discussion Stark700 - Mar 8, 2015	17 replies	by Jimbo11 »» Mar 10, 2022 6:41 AM
Poll: Murasakiiro no Qualia Chapter 11 Discussion Stark700 - Jun 30, 2013	7 replies	by potatoturboswag »» Dec 17, 2020 2:51 AM
Where can I buy the manga in English? SaladisCash - Apr 19, 2019	1 replies	by Pleinair »» Apr 20, 2019 5:22 AM
Poll: Murasakiiro no Qualia Chapter 10 Discussion Stark700 - Jun 29, 2013	2 replies	by Pleinair »» Nov 21, 2018 4:10 AM
is it ever shown what does the robots look like for her? sundogaurora - Jun 11, 2017	1 replies	by Thedude3445 »» Oct 13, 2018 7:53 PM

Murasakiiro no Qualia
Qualia the Purple
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