A beautiful yet alien world.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Haruko Ichikawa
Translation/Adaptation: Alethea Nibley & Athena Nibley
What They Say
In a world inhabited by crystalline lifeforms called The Lustrous, every unique gem must fight for their way of life against the threat of Lunarians who would turn them into decorations. Phosphophyllite, the most fragile and brittle of gems, longs to join the battle. When Phos is instead assigned to complete a natural history of their world, it sounds like a dull and pointless task. But this new job brings Phos into contact with Cinnabar, a gem forced to live in isolation. Can Phos’s seemingly mundane assignment lead both Phos and Cinnabar to the fulfillment they desire?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Post, post, post, post-apocalyptic earth is a world made nearly unrecognizable. All that seems to be left is a narrow strip of earth, whatever lives on it, the ocean, and six moons floating in the sky. Upon the grassy fields live a small civilization of humanoid beings called the lustrous, nearly immortal organisms whose only natural enemy are beings that live on those moons.
While we get some of the background of the world early on, much of it is cryptic, strange, and alien. Why so much Buddhist imagery? What are the Lunarians and are the creatures sent to capture the gems them or just their weapons? How large was the civilization at the start and how many have been captured? We’re left without answers to all these questions as the story focuses mostly on Phos and their quest to find something that they can do to benefit an increasingly shrinking population.
Phos is a lazy gem with the maturity of a 13-year-old trapped in a brittle yet immortal frame. Familiarity breeds contempt, and most of the other gems are pretty fed up with Phos. Phos wants to be a soldier but has the lowest hardness of any of the others. Combined with a pretty color, Phos is a constant target of the Lunarians. So the leader of the gems instructs Phos to study the flora and fauna of the world, and Phos has no idea how to even start. Instructed to ask Cinnabar for help, Phos meets with the least understood gem who is equally fragile and has a unique ability to produce liquid mercury. That poison is one of the few dangers to the other gems, blocking their ability to absorb life-giving sunlight.
There’s a high sense of style over substance throughout this volume, although the story feels familiar in some ways its setting is intriguing. What it never stops being is slightly absurd and surprisingly humorous, especially in the last quarter of this first volume where Phos is accidentally ingested by a space snail. Yes, that’s right. Phos is so hopeless that any challenge is prone to failure, and thus Phos is devoured because they were standing in the wrong spot.
The design of the gems themselves is laughably improbable. Manga typically has a high ratio of androgynous waifs but this manga takes that to a new level. Just look at the cover art, backs and butts don’t work like that! However, it doesn’t matter so much here because the gems aren’t humans and they don’t reproduce sexually. They are beings that evolved to resemble humans and apparently spring fully formed from the depths of the ocean. The shared uniform all the gems wear make it difficult sometimes to pick faces out of a crowd because hair colors don’t translate to black and white. Hairstyles and some facial differences do help, but since everyone shares the same body type it can be a challenge. The book carefully doesn’t refer to a single gem with any gendered terms because we simply don’t know at this point if any think of themselves as a gender. (Expect maybe sensei, who for unexplained reasons looks like a far larger and older man.)
The concept of gems personified fighting against aliens seems suspiciously familiar to an American cartoon currently airing, but this is a strange case of simultaneous spontaneous development. (Both properties debuted within months of each other with Lustrous beating Steven Universe to premier by half a year.) That comparison isn’t lost on Kodansha, who is hoping maybe some of that audience might want to check this out too. Kodansha is printing this book at the larger A5 size and does include the opening color illustrations. There are only a couple of extras in this volume, a few 4-panel gag comics and a page of translation notes.
In Summary
Land of the Lustrous is a strange book. Full of art deco, hyper-stylized illustrations paired with Buddhist imagery, matched with typical anime personalities. At its heart, it’s the story of two lost souls finding some meaning in their lives, but the draw is the art and the weird world these being inhabit. Especially since Phos, while amusing, isn’t exactly the most encouraging protagonist. While we’re slowly being introduced to more members of the lustrous, the personalities can be stereotypical and boring compared to the strange and wonderful world about them. It’s certainly something new, interesting, and unusual. Sometimes beautiful, often strange.
Content Grade: B +
Art Grade: B +
Packaging Grade: B +
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: June 27th, 2017
MSRP: $12.99
