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| Not pictured: heartbreak tears feels |
Reading Immortal Rain and then another typical shoujo
just totally ruins it for me. See I was just derping around mangafox, looking
for a sugar hit in the form of one of those generic school romances with the
idol guys and the clumsy but cheerful girl. Immortal Rain sounded pretty
interesting, about an immortal 624 yr old man and a tomboyish 14 yr old girl
whose paths cross when said girl tries to kill the man but end up travelling
with him. Well I can see where this is going. And the cover had the two of them
plus a more emo looking younger guy with them. WELL ALL OF IT IS LIES BECAUSE
THIS SERIES RUINS YOUR FEELINGS AND KILLS YOU WITH ITS CREYS. I AM NOT EVEN
JOKING FUCKING DEPRESSING SERIES ABOUT IMMORTALITY. (imlookingatyoubladeoftheimmortal)
It totally ruins those generic shoujos because it’s so
damn complex and depressing and beautiful and sad and scary and it’s just
stupidly gorgeous in all kinds of ways. Fuck it right? But wow what a story,
dealing with of course themes of immortality, love, nihilism and family. And
all of this is wrapped in that beautifully poetic language that I love. There
isn’t even a clear character who’s the villain in all of it (except for Dora
Folk, he was a bastard). To start off with, you think Sharem is the bad guy in
all of these. But once you’ve gotten to her ending, it’s just a total mess of
feels with her deceased son, and her son in all but blood, and all the children
who loved her. When Yuca calls her ‘mom’ I’m telling you I lost it.
And so then you think Yuca is the bad guy in all this,
and even the one winged angel at the end is really his doing. But by then he’s
gone through so much, especially his interactions with Machika which I love. So
when she appears in the tropical paradise, when he pushes Rain towards his new
future, I can’t even. I just really love the three of them together, just
imagine all that love. And I love love love his relationship with Machika, like
when she says Yuca could probably explain a rainbow better, or when he begins
to change. And when he does change, it’s so beautiful because you know why he
does. When he runs out of bullets for suicide I was just screaming fuck yes
because it’s all that love. When Rain said he believes in people instead of
God, it’s a love that Yuca begins to know.
Machika and Rain are just so meant to be. It was a expected
happy ending when he gets what he wants but by then the series was getting more
and more intense. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t adorable and sweet when they were
first skirting around each other and Rain was doing the typical ‘stay away from
her to prevent hurting her’ thing.
And what I really loved was the love. Normally it would
seem like tying up romantic loose ends, but I loved that everyone got paired up
at the end. I loved the love. And there was so much of it. You see everyone standing
there, all the love that got them through to the end, and all the love between
them. Rain who wandered the world having lost love, found it again in an
unexpected grim reaper and suddenly his world had meaning again. He even asks
himself, would he have become like Yuca if he never met Machika? Machika who
grew enormously, whose world became about love, and gave it so freely to
everyone. Yuca who received both their loves and found peace for himself, and
in the world. Alya who fought for her love, met a girl who taught her to live,
and found love again. Sharem whose role was that of a mother, and her love that
connected her as a mother to all her children. Euya whose life was for love, of
his family, of Sharem, and who saw the love between a little girl and an
immortal man and brought him to a new love.
Even Kiki, to the very end, and starting anew, found a friend he could
protect. People are complicated. If a God is ‘people’s feelings’, then love
must be the one we pray to. C’est l’amour, c’est l’amour qui fait le monde
ronde! And that’s what really any shoujo is about isn’t it? It's about the love.
Don’t cry on a
sleepless night
Don’t fall down in
cold rain
Live.
Live.
For years to come.
Take me with you
into the distant future
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