Print Review- March on Earth
I’ve decided to challenge myself. Throughout the spring and summer (meaning: before I go on maternity leave, while I can still read free manga at work), I am going to try reading mange in genres I normally wouldn’t touch. Sports, magical girl, high school romantic comedy, kiddie stuff, anything based on a video or card game…I’m going to be brave and try them all.
The first title in my experiment falls into the category of ‘teenager is forced to raise a baby’. This is an actual sub-genre in manga; I can think of at least three series on the same subject: Aisheteruze Baby, Baby and Me, and March on Earth, the subject of my first experiment (Mikase Hayashi, CMX, March 2009).
Yuzu, like all good manga characters, is an orphan. After her parents died, she was raised by her teenage sister Tsubaki. When Tsubaki became an unwed mother, the three formed a tight-knit if unconventional family. But when little Shou is only two, his mother is killed in a car wreck. Fifteen-year-old Yuzu finds herself living alone, attending school, and raising a toddler on her inheritance money (this sort of stunning oversight by the Japanese child welfare department seems common, at least in manga storylines).
It’s a touch break for a teenager. Yuzu gas to learn to stick to a tight budget, give Shou the attention he needs and keep her place among the top-ranked students in her school so she can attend college and make a better life for her nephew. In between she must deal with her own grief and Shou’s; potty-train him, take care of him when he’s sick and do the million other tasks that normally fall to mothers. But she’s not totally alone in this; her kindly landlady and her sons are always willing to help, especially Seita, who goes to school with Yuzu and has a huge crush on her. Unfortunately for him, she’s a little too busy to notice.
The first volume follows Yuzu’s day-to-day life. She takes Shou on a playdate, works on her slipping grades and desperately tries to figure out a way to buy her nephew a Christmas present. And after a six-month skip, she runs into an old friend of her sister’s- and realizes that she has probably just met Shou’s father. Now the stakes are raised; the man deserves to know he has a child, but what if he wants custody of Shou? Would living with his father be better for the toddler? But he’s Yuzu’s only relation; can she bear to give him up? This volume ends on a cliffhanger as Yuzu agonizes over her decision.
At least readers don’t have to wait long for a resolution. Volume two, the last in the series, is scheduled to be released this summer.
Maybe it’s because I’m having a kid soon. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones. But even though I usually would never read something like March on Earth, I have to confess I’m glad I did. There’s no action and no murder, and nothing particularly Earth-shaking happens; in fact, nothing really important occurs until the end of volume one. The entire premise reeks faintly of the ridiculous, but the story itself is engaging and emotional.
Yuzu is a regular shoujo heroine, but one with a spine of steel and a sometimes unfortunate unwillingness to rely on others. Her devotion to Shou is touching, particularly in the Christmas story. Despite his age, Shou is no stranger to going without, and it’s sweet and heart-wrenching to see how hard Yuzu works to finally get him something he wants.
The rest of the cast is composed of similarly good-hearted people, from the kindly landlady to Shou’s father to Seita, whose feelings for Yuzu drive him to ridiculous lengths to get her attention. There’s not a ton of psychological complexity here, but the nature of the story doesn’t lead you to expect it; in the end, March on Earth is a feel-good manga.
You get the feeling the managka doesn’t know much about kids; Shou behaves alternately like an older child and like a baby. But it doesn’t matter much, since he’s really just a plot device to tell Yuzu’s story.
The art is nothing special; in fact, Shou isn’t a very attractive child. I was surprised to catch several typos in the text, since CMX usually does a better job than that, but maybe they’re laying off employees like all the other manga companies (they always seem to start with the proofreaders). The chapters have sidebars with the mangaka’s musing, mostly the standard “Thanks for reading my manga/sending fan mail”, etc. The cover looks as if it were lifted wholesale from the Japanese release, which is rather a pity as generally American covers are more attractive than the Japanese ones.
There’s not much exciting about March on Earth, but it’s a pleasant little story about tragedy and determination. I’ll definitely be picking up volume two to see what happens.
Next experiment: Dinosaur Hour, a series that looks as if it is targeted toward slightly dim seven-year-olds.
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