Lovely Strange Dark Shuhei Kurata is stuck. Going to a new school where he doesn’t fit in, standing still as his old friends leave him behind. Watching silently as the woman he loves slips further and further away. He feels detached and out of place, as if maybe it all might be a dream. Perhaps it is…

Chikyuu wa Boku ga Mawasu is a very quiet coming of age story. As is typical of those, the protagonist struggles with a changing world wherein he has to redefine himself: Just as his relationships and environment cannot forever remain as they were, so does he have to adapt to a continuously evolving reality. Failing to do so results in a standstill, which, in this story, means reliving the same dream over and over, doomed to repeat the few days that make up the time loop.

While the manga has its shortcomings and its emotional moments remain subdued throughout, its themes and mood do speak to me: The clean art style — the pure black and white aesthetics, the scarce use of backgrounds — goes well with Shuhei’s emotional detachment and bleak outlook; the dream setting and the disorientation that comes with not knowing what’s happening underline his physical and mental isolation. Running away from a reality where you lack control and feel left behind, desperately trying to avoid pain, creating a parallel world where you can give shape to your desires: These are all things associated with adolescence and narratives thereof. In that context, the dream setting gives literal meaning to retreating to your innermost in order to confront your flaws and self-doubts, and waking up to pursue a new path in your growth.

Change can be so immensely hard and painful. It makes you question the structures and bonds that were, doubt their sincerity; it forcefully ejects you from the world you thought you knew; it robs you of all that was once certain, and makes you hesitant to place your trust in anything new (why bother if nothing is designed to last?); it isolates you because you feel all alone with your struggles; it strips you of any power you thought you had as you realize that you can’t make things go back to how they were.

I think that the manga beautifully captures the desolateness of that state. Perhaps it is its unexpected quietness that drew me in (ending spoilers ahead!): Shuhei feels lost and drained, struggling with his own indecisiveness to the very end, but the end of the story doesn’t come with any big revelations. Shuhei doesn’t find a miraculous solution to his emotional entanglements, and there is no external impetus or internal ambition that makes him decide to wake up. No, he decides to leave the dream because he understands that he can’t run away forever — it’s as simple and as monumental as that. And that, I think, says a whole lot about the strength that goes into the act of living on, facing a reality that doesn’t wait for you.

In Japanese folklore, the Baku is known as a dream eater: a creature that visits sleeping dreamers at night to devour their nightmares. It is said that the Baku can be summoned either by asking for its protection prior to falling asleep, or by calling out to it three times in the wake of a bad dream. The Baku would promptly appear to devour the evil spirits at the source of the nightmare, allowing the summoner to drift back into peaceful sleep. Caution must be exercised when imploring its help, however, for if the Baku’s hunger isn’t satiated, it might eat any hopes, ambitions and desires within the person as well, leaving behind an empty shell.

The Baku has its origins in Chinese folklore; legend has it that it was created from the leftover pieces used by the gods to create all other animals. Depictions of it have changed over time, ranging from chimera to tapir.

For more information regarding its history and appearances along with different depictions of it, head over to Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai.

I fell in love with Inoru’s design and whimsical nature at first sight, but what truly fascinates me is the ambivalence of her role, as her ever-changing motives are beyond Shuhei and the reader’s grasp: In the beginning, she’s a question mark who appears every now and then to get a rise out of Shuhei while also being the only person who knows what’s happening. Next, she provokes him into living out his wishes within his dream, which, to me, gave off the impression that she was trying to trap him in that world. After all, it’s easy to let go of the real world if you can get anything you want in your made-up fantasy.

Inoru has a clearly designated role, one that demands of her to comply with Shuhei’s wishes. However, the Baku of folklore doesn’t act purely out of altruism: It feasts on dreams, and if you summon it only to leave it unfulfilled, it might decide to take more than what was intended. I do believe that Inoru tries to help Shuhei to the best of her abilities, and she’s shown not to judge him for any of his decisions (nor does she ever call him a loser when he’s being self-deprecating). But it’s important to see that in this scene, she’s bringing her own perspective into this, thus confounding what he wants with what she wants for herself. No longer is she a neutral guide.

Inoru’s changing motivations throughout the story are thus a reflection of Shuhei’s own indecisiveness, their evolving relationship as well as her own sense of self.

As said above, Inoru’s support is genuine, but that’s not all there is. While the story’s focus is on Shuhei’s struggles and he himself admits that he barely knows anything about her, there are occasional lines of hers that, to me, hint at her own loneliness: truths that come with her existence as a dream eater.

One instance of this is when she clearly enjoys browsing Shuhei’s photo album, calling him lucky and mentioning in passing that she has no memories to claim as her own; another is when Shuhei asks her what’s going on in real life, to which she has no answer as she doesn’t exist outside of dreams. Neither of them dwells on those statements, but it feels lonely to me.

Close to the end of the story, when it seems as though Shuhei has made up his mind to remain in his dream world rather than face the painful reality, Inoru takes him out on a date. Realizing that he’s having a good time with her, Shuhei takes it as an opportunity to forget about real life altogether. Again, I wouldn’t see this as Inoru trying to trap Shuhei, but as her helping him in her own way.

More importantly though, by this stage at the latest, Inoru has come to care about him in a very personal way — perhaps beyond her function as a guide, as she becomes physically affectionate and is curious about what he thinks of her. Her teasing now has something coquettish to it, and even Shuhei notices how her expressions are much more vivid than before.

Even so, Inoru’s existence is necessary: Though she is “only” capable of supporting and not leading, her presence serves as a guide to lost dreamers. Inoru is very much like an inner voice that helps them sort out their troubles at their own pace, keeping them company on their journey of introspection. She takes the role of therapist and friend, lending ear and shoulder to those who lay bare their pain to her — even if it comes at the cost of her own identity and wants.

Though goodbyes are painful and Inoru will inevitably disappear from Shuhei’s memory, that doesn’t mean that her existence has made no difference. Inoru’s impact shows in the Shuhei who has gone on his journey, and who is now ready to emerge from his dream as a person ready to face life once more, a person capable of maturing. He doesn’t have life all figured out, he can’t change who he is right away, and he knows he still has his flaws and that he’ll still mess up in the future — but due to what she has given him, he is able to go on.

The story ends with him being the last to leave the classroom, right after waking from an unintended nap. On his way out, he bumps into a girl wearing his school’s uniform. He apologizes to her, she assures him that she’s alright, and he leaves. The girl looks on as he slowly walks away, then picks up the career counselling sheet that he dropped.

Endings of stories involving memories of events not real to anyone but the dreamer (or, in the case of parallel worlds, the traveller) have something very melancholic and lonely to them that I appreciate. Characters in roles like Inoru’s stay with me: companions, guides and friends that stay behind or fade away, and whose existence will be forgotten or replaced in some way once the protagonist has reached the end of their journey. This is very specific, and it overlaps with some other tropes that I enjoy (companions that sacrifice themselves during the last legs of the journey; doors to parallel worlds that are forever closed off; mirror images of someone dear to the protagonist), so it’s rare for me to come across it.

I associate these three scenarios with Inoru for various reasons. In the first case, Shuhei and Inoru’s goodbye scene heavily reminded me of the final scene and promise between Sora and Naminé right away. (I was ecstatic.) Both girls are very isolated and become attached to the protagonist due to never having had an encounter of that kind before, yet both of them understand that the things and people truly important to said person aren’t them. By the end of the stories, the two protagonists make a choice that will lead them to forget those shadow girls — but not without leaving them with words of comfort: sincere promises filled with hope, however improbable they may sound.

In the second case, the scene from Angel Sanctuary quite obviously bears striking similarity to the entirety of Chikyuu wa Boku ga Mawasu. Like Shuhei, Setsuna doesn’t escape into a dream world simply due to things not going the way he wants in his reality: Neither of them is what you’d call a coward, their actual issues being that reality is crashing down on them, and they need that time to collect themselves (see the next section). Both dream worlds feel unsettling to the reader from the get-go, although for different reasons: Setsuna’s ever so slightly differs from the reality he experienced, whereas Shuhei’s harbours the mysterious Inoru who shows up all of a sudden. The fake Sara and Inoru mostly seem to play along at first, then speak up in the protagonists’ interests, telling them that it’s alright for them to remain within their fantasies. In the end, however, both girls reveal that they, too, have their own interests in mind, even if they firmly come second. What haunts me about the dissolution of Setsuna’s dream world is the fake Sara’s facial expression: an expression of pain and hurt, even though she is only a dream image. In the same vein, the reader doesn’t know with full certainty whether Inoru is “real” or whether she’s a phantasm in Shuhei’s mind only, yet she has very real emotions of her own.

In the third case, Inoru is very much like those time-travelling partners: a temporary go-to person within a certain setting and during a certain time. She can’t truly exist outside of that frame, yet does her best to offer Shuhei support. And when his journey is over, when he’s done reliving his days from the past, he leaves and forgets about her. When they meet in his reality, they walk past each other, no sign of recognition on his side — just as in typical time travel endings.

Coming across dream worlds in fiction is something that always strikes a chord in me (if you couldn’t tell by another shrine of mine, Setting Sun) — they fascinate me, just as dreams fascinate me.

Dreams are in-between worlds, all the more so when the dreamer is, on some level, aware of the fact that they’re dreaming. Even if events seem surreal and unsettling, they may still unfold, and even if the dreamer knows that certain things can’t possibly be happening, it doesn’t make them feel less real, whether or not they are desirable or pleasant. Due to that, dreams always come with a loss of control and the feeling of helplessness.

I particularly love it when a narrative in its entirety revolves around the state of dreaming, and ends with waking from that dream. That is not to say that I enjoy fantastic and gruesome experiences being erased the moment the protagonist wakes up — inconsequential stories rarely impress me. No, the reason dream narratives hold my interest is due to the way they are capable of shaping the reality after the dream, that is to say, when the things someone goes through in a dream have a lasting effect.

This shrine was created in October 2016, released on Halloween: a liminal time during which the boundary between the worlds is blurred. A documentation of its creation process can be found at Song Cradle, the network’s repository.

This layout’s alternating colours are meant to reflect the back-and-forth between sleeping and waking: the realm of dreams. Lucas’ latest network layout must have inspired some of it, namely with regard to the unbridled usage of inline-CSS (don’t judge me ok) and the enhanced borders around the manga panels. Who’d have thought that simple black borders could be so lovely?

On 24th October, I came across Lovely Strange Dark, a scanlation group whose mission statement and releases just happened to be exactly my aesthetic: What followed were two days of reading all of the group’s completed releases, all of them being unique — strange indeed — and whimsical, which is particularly pleasant as seinen and josei manga rarely see international release. Among them, Chikyuu wa Boku ga Mawasu spoke to me on a personal level, as I had only just begun to rise from several very dark and debilitating weeks. I spent the entire week after that obsessively working on In Another Dream as a means of recovery, hoping that by reliving Shuhei’s experiences, I would find the strength and courage needed to crawl out of the black pit.

Depression and hardships come and (hopefully) go. When I think back on some persons from earlier periods in my life who helped me through very hard times, I become sentimental. There’s something melancholic about relationships that are intended to be temporary from the very beginning. One’s own relationship to tutors, nurses and psychologists is an example of that: people who are there for you during a certain period of your life, people who help you face difficulties you may not have shared with anyone else, and who are aware of the weaknesses you’ve been struggling with. In some aspects, they may even know you more intimately than anyone else — yet, despite that intimacy, you have always been meant to part.

It’s sad, beginning something only to have it end — knowing all along that it would end — but those encounters are the ones that we need during that time; they are what may help us grow, so we must never be afraid to reach out. In many ways, the same can be said about any relationship that we start. At some point, we may even no longer remember those faces, those names — and still they will have contributed to the person we have become.

All manga scans are from Lovely Strange Dark, a scanlation group whose projects I strongly recommend, miscellaneous scans are from Minitokyo. Textures used are from WebTreatsETC. Fredericka the Great, Crimson Text, Sail, Droid Sans, Droid Serif and Fira Sans serve as content fonts. Scripts used are fancyBox, Animated Collapsible DIV, jQuery Tooltips and shapes polyfill.

Special thanks to Font Wizard Masao for summoning the gorgeous heading fonts out of thin air (based on a description as vague as ”god idek wtf I'm looking for, something surreal and dreamy but also like the world is crashing down on you” at that) as well as input on various coding issues, to resident Yo-kai Watch Enthusiast Destinie for feeding me supplemental information on those quirky spirits, and Partners in Time Andrea, Elysa and Larissa for beta-reading the time-travelling part for me! Lastly, thanks to all the lovely folks at Amassment and Twitter for expressing interest and cheering me on as I was working on this shrine; I am very moved by how many of you are sincerely interested in the things I create, and how much love and support I receive from you. Thank you for being my friends.