Toshimi Nigoshi

After suddenly being placed in a state of suspended animation for unknown reasons, high schooler Kotaro wakes up to a world where humans are scarce and androids have mostly taken over. These (very human like) androids have their own culture and government (and along with that a good deal of political strife), yet for some reason, they only seem to be able to retain memories for 22 years. The past forgotten, androids have become under the impression that humans were an created by them for the purpose of holding memories.

The Flat Earth/Exchange is filled with a lot of things that interest me. It sets itself up to explore themes of humanity's need for companionship and contact as well as memories and the part they play in making us who we are. It's got characters in sympathetic situations (the main character struggling with surviving in a very different world, while another is an android who knows he is on the verge of losing some very important memories). What's more, the author seemed truly interested in exploring these themes rather than just setting up this interesting backdrop just to run through some usual manga plot that could have taken place anywhere.

On the other hand, the storytelling and methods for setting up the backdrop are hectic and sloppy. This might not mean the mangaka's bad at it (especially considering I think this might be a debut work?). There's just so MUCH to introduce--the situation with the androids, huge cast of characters, some sort of situation with politics and war and terrorism--that you'd have to be a pro to get it all out in a digestible manner.

Instead, explanations and setup for the story (information that likely could have been introduced at a more gradual pace later in the story with no harm done to understanding) gets jam-packed into this volume, leaving little room for actual development in plot or main character's situation. POV flops quickly back and forth to characters in different places doing completely unrelated things for little discernible reason. The mangaka (sometimes) shies away from giving direct "now let me tell you about XXX" explanations for her world-building, instead trying to drop bits of information through dialogue (something I usually appreciate), yet the info drops still come off as forced. Moreover, the translation often makes the already difficult info-bearing dialogue processing nearly impossible. This is some of the most unnatural phrasing I've ever seen in an official translation.

Yet I can imagine a world in which this manga was executed differently and was absolutely fantastic. As is, the characters and plot don't seem overly impressive, but they're decent enough they could probably make an interesting manga given the wealth of possible fun to be had with the setup, so long as it went on long enough to get over all this explanation and figure out what it wants to do with itself and calm down. And indeed, the author's notes at the end reveal this was intended as a longer series. However, with only three more volumes and the manga showing nothing close to being done with its explanations, my hopes aren't high.… (plus d'informations)