Reviews

Have you ever felt you were “not normal” or simply just didn’t fit in? There are around 7 billion people yet you have no one to “love” or “be loved” by anyone just because you don’t have the so called normal life which comes naturally to everyone around you. You can’t seem to understand what exactly “love” is that so many appear to know naturally yet have no idea since majority of them break away from one another. Have you ever pondered upon whether you might be asexual? Or even gender neutral? Yet you feel you don’t seem to fit in with any of the gender labels out there. Yes, you’re going through a huge identity crisis and nothing out there can help you since you feel you’re a bit of everything yet not anything. So what and who exactly are you?

Similar is the case with Chika, who felt she was an alien since she couldn’t just fit in. She is asked out by someone she got along with but was grossed out when that dude pushed her down on the first day. She is forced by others perspective that she just hasn’t found “her one” and once she does things will fall into place. Honestly, we all think about having that one who we will cross paths with someday. But what if there’s no one like that :-) such is the journey of chika who goes to college and after interactions with a psychology professor and taking quizzes etc to get to know herself finds that she may be asexual afterall.

Now that’s not all to it. The manga gets into both psychological and philosophical realm. You will see characters having a Socratic dialogue regarding the difference between romantic and sexual attraction, thereby, what constitutes cheating - is it just touching someone else’s hand or kissing/sex with someone other than partner…this further takes us to the root question what exactly is love? What defines love? Turns out everyone has a different definition of love or actually even sexual orientations and so on. So how are we to judge who we are - is it what we think of ourself or is it what others think of ourselves, that is, if I see myself as an asexual but my friend’s projection of me is not asexual does that make me one or not?

The manga also briefly dives into different spectrums of asexuality, for example - what if you don’t feel (sexually/romantically) attracted to people yet you feel some sort of feelings, for say, fictional characters or even celebs, which may be just platonic (or maybe not) but you still don’t see yourself ever getting down on with them like ever. Would you still be an asexual or not?

So these are the basic themes dealt in merely 6 chapters of the manga which is so fascinating because I’ve never read a manga like this before. Also it’s clear how the mangaka was writing from personal experience because it really hits the unvoiced part of the like minded readers.

I’ll definitely recommend literally everyone to check out out because it is a must read!