"What's the point?"

Started very unexpected, but delivered the melancholy I hoped for well.
I also like that the sidekick character sort of gave aro/ace rep. Not sure whether that was intentional but I love it. (Ps: not directly ace/aro, more like apothi or a different microlabel under the umbrella.)

The art is nice and cutesy (making the guns/weapons feel out of place, but in a silly/cartoonish way, lol), though I couldn't always tell the characters apart. Especially in the first chapter with the penguins.

Worldbuilding is a little odd, but also not that much of a biggie, since it's more about the message. Feels like typical western cartoon where you just gotta accept that it plays in our world with a few bonuses. 

 ~

Thank you to Kodansha on Netgalley for a digital review copy. The book was released on 7th October 2025. 

-Ayxan Solongo, 06.01.26

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REVIEW PART WITHOUT SPOILERS:


I mean, it's short, has good art, and an interesting concept at first, even though I didn't really grasp it.
It is meant to be some kind of philosophical story, but on such short runtime it isn't that developed, at least it's what I think. Maybe i'm just not good at nuance, maybe I'm right and it didn't do that really good.

For what I understood, the six chapters are a collection of two specific souls that keep reincarnating in different species and they are friends in every reality. One of them is skeptical (???; it kinda seems to change; its either character development or it's just a flawed character, can't tell, too short of a story) and the other is much more like a sage, giving advice on how to live life and to enjoy it and its minimal details. One of them thinks of life and of what happens as futile, not worth living and just go with the flow, and the sage one thinks of doing enjoyable things, about all the things life can give.

SPOILERS AHEAD


Story/Characters: 6
I'm kinda divided on this one, the story is just the characters interacting and the constant contrast between their philosophical takes on reality. While it sounds interesting, I do not think it went really deep, maybe it just couldn't go deeper because of the episodic nature of the manga, but at the same time it's not inherently bad.

To make it concise: because of the episodic and short nature of the story as a whole/each story, the conflict between the contrasting ideas of the characters do not go to any place. Its just a really superficial debate/info dump (not in terms of the quality of the arguments, but because of the lack of development on the ideas). Despite that, there is a trace of character development. The first and the last chapters are in penguin's reality, where Pen is changed relative to his persona of the first chapter. It is not clear if the other chapters on the other realities made any change in Pen at the last chapter because it's shown very little of his character. He only goes from "Life is meaningless and is not worth living" to "Life is worth living and death is not the solution" but without deepening. Also, the timeline is quite confusing. When did each reality happen? Were they interconnected? Were they simultaneus in differente timelines or were they linear? Were they connected to Pen's character development? Etc.

About the characters: Their dynamic is quite interesting. Despite age, one of them is always the sage of the other, and the one who though about life meaninglessness is shown to be changed only at the last chapter.

Art: 10

Cute, very cute. Animals.

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