Kaikisen

Yosuke Yashiro's family has a strange, unique tradition—once every 60 years, they receive an egg from a mermaid where it sits protected in a shrine. After the egg matures, the family dutifully returns it to the sea, and the process is repeated. In exchange for this favor, the merpeople bless their coastal town with bountiful catches of fish and calm seas.

However, commercial developers encroach on the sleepy seaside hamlet and Yosuke's father is lured away from tradition toward modern prosperity, turning the mermaid's egg into a tourist trap. What will happen to the promise their family made to the mermaids all those years ago?

Included one-shot:
Volume 1: Summer of Tension

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Kaikisen was published in English as Tropic of the Sea by Vertical Inc. on September 17, 2013. It was also released in Italian as La stirpe della sirena by Star Comics on August 1, 1998.

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Nov 22, 2024

Mara2463

Recommended

Tropic of the Sea – Spoiler Free – Recommended

TLDR
Story – 6,5/10 – 6,5 x 0.275 = 1,7875
Art – 8/10 – 8 x 0.2 = 1,6
Characters – 5/10 – 5 x 0.225 = 1,125
Enjoyment – 7/10 – 7 x 0.3 = 2,1
Total: 6,6125 -> 7

Story – 6,5/10
Tropic of the Sea is a one-volume manga by Satoshi Kon himself. It mainly deals with the debate of progress and tradition and about novelty and familiarity. However, Kon incorporates a mythical element in the plot: mermaids and a mermaid egg. Supposedly, there is a tradition in which a mermaid egg has to be returned to the sea periodically (from ...

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Aug 26, 2024

Chiaki_Shura

Recommended

Master Kon is best known for his work in animation, and now I can say that I’m glad I’ve delved into his manga production, because I’ve found a beautiful work that, in contrast to the often dark tones of the aforementioned author, explores the relationship between humans and nature, playing with mystery but never truly becoming dark.

The story, set in the coastal village of Tsunate, tells of the contrast between old and new, where the beautiful natural world is on the verge of being forcefully disrupted by the need to keep up with the world, which involves modernizing the village through the typical intervention of ... an external company offering to invest in new city infrastructure, whether for entertainment and tourism or for things like healthcare.
The contrast is first narrated through the family of the protagonist, Yosuke, who have managed the town’s Shinto shrine for generations. The shrine safeguards the egg of the umibito, creatures that are essentially mermaids, which, according to local legend, have ensured the town's prosperity through the sea's resources in exchange for Yosuke’s family’s promise to protect their eggs: a single egg that would hatch after 60 years, after which another egg would be entrusted to the firstborn of the next generation.
Within the family, you can sense the conflict between the old and the new as Yosuke's father seems increasingly detached from family traditions in pursuit of progress, while the grandfather is predictably still tied to traditions. And then there’s the protagonist, who is somewhere in the middle: he takes care of the umibito egg but also wants to move to the city to attend university.
This same contrast is also evident in the protagonist’s childhood friend, who spent so much time in the city, detached from Tsunate, that she now feels nostalgic for it.

I also found it wonderful how the work uses Shinto philosophy (a theme seen in many works but still worthy of attention) to show the relationship between humans and nature, where the umibito are always depicted as mysterious beings, yes, but never as truly hostile creatures that punish when the pact is broken. At most, what happens, I personally interpret as a warning. And in general, this relationship is something healthy, where nature and humans coexist and help each other.

It’s also interesting to see how such traditions, these fascinating esoteric elements, can sometimes be “devalued” (depending on the situation and point of view) by the same progress that turns these elements into tourist attractions, or sometimes they become something to be directly appropriated for economic purposes.

In its final message, the work does not reject progress, but rather condemns the excess that leads to the destruction of natural heritage, advocating for the classic middle way that allows for peaceful coexistence. This is, in part, what Japan is today, and Kon has depicted it in a fascinating way.

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Sep 18, 2024

ttaka

Mixed Feelings

I found Tropic of the Sea to be a beautifully-drawn but tame and not particularly original experience.

Story

"Run of the mill" would be the first phrase that comes to mind for me. While the setting seems well-realized, the plot is a standard call-out of greedy land development that many of us have likely seen in children's or young adult media, and not handled with nearly as much nuance as something like Princess Mononoke.
While the town of Ade feels like a well-realized setting, I came away feeling like it was just a different flavor of something like Hoot.
That's not inherently a bad thing, but there's nothing about ... the story that will leave me thinking or impact my feelings about preservation vs development. I could guess where the plot was going at the beginning and by the end, I was right.

Characters

While the characters presented felt realistic and had the potential for depth, their development was never really explored.

The protagonist, Yosuke, is set up as an indecisive teenager placed in the crossfire between tradition and progress. It's an interesting conflict, and we can see him struggle with wanting to decide his own position, but his mind is ultimately made up by something that happens *to* him to resolve the conflict in this particular situation, rather than newfound conviction coming from internal growth.

The antagonist, Mr. Ozaki, is serviceable in his role but has little depth. He's a literal puppy-kicking land developer of the sort that most of us have likely seen in children's movies. While parts of the story hint at a more nuanced conflict where progress and change might not be all bad, that idea can't really factor in to the plot when one side is headed by such a one-dimensional character.

The other characters, while believable and likeable, are generally static. I feel that there was opportunity to explore some of them further, but it seems that was ultimately not the aim of the story, which is fine.

Art
My highest praise for this manga is for the beautifully detailed artwork.
Characters look realistic while still being expressive and distinct. Every panel has a background that makes the town feel like a living place, and water, in its various states throughout the story, always looks stunning.

A small critique is that panels sometimes seem to cut between different scenes without establishing a change of setting or an action that happened in between. For example, in one panel the antagonist is holding an important item and in the next the protagonist is. I did a double take and then figured "I guess they handed it over between panels." These kinds of cuts were never so distracting that I lost track of the story or couldn't figure out what happened by pausing a moment, but there were enough instances that I noticed and found them to interrupt the flow of the story.

Overall, it was a quick and fun read. Nothing bothered me about it, the pacing was good, and I loved the detailed art, but I doubt anything about this manga will leave a lasting impact.

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Poll: Kaikisen Chapter 2 Discussion eski514 - May 29, 2019	1 replies	by Zuit »» Jul 10, 2022 2:04 PM
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Poll: Kaikisen Chapter 7 Discussion linkjoker - Apr 25, 2017	2 replies	by Alcoholicide »» Jan 23, 2021 6:21 PM
Poll: Kaikisen Chapter 6 Discussion eski514 - May 31, 2019	0 replies	by eski514 »» May 31, 2019 3:09 PM
Poll: Kaikisen Chapter 5 Discussion SqueezedLemons - Apr 21, 2019	1 replies	by eski514 »» May 31, 2019 1:42 PM

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