Basically, you can say this series is good because of stuff like the alienation thing that I mentioned, which is true, or you can phrase it like I am and say simply that this manga is an extremely fun slice-of-life comic full of characters that act like people I'm friends with and set in a world that resembles the one I live in like no other I've ever seen in media. I was born in 2001, and am therefore solidly of the zoomer generation, and this manga is the song of my people, capturing the zeitgeist of gen Z to the greatest level of accuracy that I've ever seen in media, and for a slice-of-life story, that is incredibly important because portraying life is what the genre is all about. K-On excels at showing us a picture of a complex and lively group of friends, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou presents nature and the passage of time like no other series, and DeDeDeDe shows us the world as it is without casting judgement or pulling punches.
Teens in first-world countries today, whether said country is Japan, America, Europe, Australia, Korea, China, or wherever else, are coming of age in an absurd world where the difference between irony and sincerity is impossible (and maybe even irrelevant) to distinguish, where the massive amounts of knowledge and media available confuse us as much as they enlighten us, and where the very idea of preparing for the future seems bizarre when all that future holds is global instability, catastrophic climate change, and extreme economic inequality that might very well doom our entire species. Our governments do little, our youth movements are ineffectual, and though people should be banding together, our power structures continue to cast people aside. That's the truth the laughing kids of my--and these characters'--generation hide behind edgy memes and lighthearted complaints, but that looms in the background nonetheless, casting all of our daily lives into its subtle but deadly shadow.
And fittingly enough, even this manga hides the truth behind a metaphor. In DeDeDeDe's Japan, it isn't climate change, but a literal massive shadow that hangs over modern, daily life. A gargantuan, industrial mass of an alien spaceship has been floating in the air for three years by the start of the story, and though little violence happens and its extraterrestrial inhabitants are quite weak, the government fearmongers about them, corporations step in to cash in on weapons to use against them, and psychopathic young men wander around the backstreets to hunt them down. Through all of this, the real problem, that the ship may melt down and doom humans and "invaders" alike, is ignored and suppressed as politicians and billionaires build bunkers to weather the storm. It may seem a bit on the nose when I explain it here, but when it is revealed little by little in the story you realize that the characters are living in a world of endless high alert and military-industrial insanity just like ours.
As I said, though, the series is quite fun for the most part, and even that emulates life. The worst hasn't happened yet, and though realizing these impending disasters makes it harder to relax, it also makes you want to do so more, because its an escape. Though our industrial society may face its ruin, it still provides people with a lot to enjoy, and if there's little you can do, why waste the time you have left? The day-to-day lives of the characters, as well as their personalities and dynamics with each other, are really fun, and also very realistic. The girls banter about stupid things, bring up taboo topics to joke around, make autistic ideological declarations, and ignore the grim truths of the world the same way my friends do. One of my favorite characters, Rin, is a shy cosplayer with a secret Yaoi obsession that she is prodded by another character to admit loudly to her class because "in a surveillance state, our kinks are the only thing they can't take from us!!!" The main character, Kadode, is meant to be a self-insert but her friend, Oran, is utterly unhinged in a believable way, spouting political jargon and obsessing about shooting games and the similar bloodbaths to come because its her only way of coping, and somehow the reality of this only makes it more endearing, an insane feat that this manga somehow manages to pull off.
The artwork is perfect for the tone and themes as well. The characters have cute, distinct, and unrealistically abstracted designs for the most part, and many background characters even look ever so slightly deformed, but there is a down-to-earth quality to their bodies, framing, and implied movement that is difficult to deny, especially when they are shown in Asano's lavishly detailed backgrounds based on an eccentric amalgam of photographic references. The lighting and shading is also weirdly juxtaposed with the characters, again making their goofy designs blend in much better than they should, to the point where even they seem like perfectly natural parts of the setting. Just like the story, the art is an incongruous but resonant clash of tonalities that Asano manages incredibly, to the point where this slice-of-life manga manages to have better dramatic two-page spreads than something like Takehiko Inoe's flatly hyper-technical samurai manga Vagabond.
Slice-of-life fans and people who process the world like I and many other young people do can't miss this one, and the only major complaint that I have to counteract my praise is that DeDeDeDe introduces some characters, specifically in its main cast of girls, that it ends up not spending enough time on, making the characters, though interesting and complex, ultimately not really the driving force of this manga as much as they could have been. The uncomfortable realism of its world, though, and the comfortable resonance that can be found in the interactions of those who somehow still live in it, are really the driving force of this manga. And even the lack of character development is relatable to me, although hopefully you aren't as pathetic as I am.
