Please Save My Earth, Vol. 5

ぼくの地球を守って [Boku no Chikyū wo Mamotte] #5

by Saki Hiwatari

Are the woes of the present meant to be endured for the promise of a better future or to atone for past wrongs? In a captivating epic of love, fate and faith, seven young people must struggle with this spiritual puzzle as their alien past lives threaten the future.

The moon-dreamers seem to be falling apart. Between her brother's meddling and Jinpachi's reaction to her engagement with Rin, Alice may never go to another meeting. Issei's not too enthusiastic about going, either--especially after his frustration at reliving Enju's pain inspired him to kiss Jinpachi! In his monopoly of information, Rin throws the others a bone, telling Haruhiko to meet them as Shion.

Tamura's willing to wait for Haruhiko to come to him about his problems, but he's throwing all his free-time and connections at Haruhiko's strange situation and the mystery of Takashi's tormentor, "S." From Mikuro, an old friend's psychic brother, Tamura has learned Haruhiko's powers may not be human. But Tamura will soon leave Tokyo to accompany Takashi, who's transferring to a school in Kyoto for safety's sake. The combination of Tamura's leaving and Rin's new scheme has made Haruhiko suddenly desperate to see Tamura...

Genres: Manga, Romance, Science Fiction, Shojo, Fantasy, Comics, Drama

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Saki Hiwatari (日渡早紀 in Japanese) is a Japanese shōjo manga artist. Her first work, "Mahōtsukai wa Shitteiru" was published in the weekly shōjo anthology Hana to Yume in 1982.

Reviews

[Coke Fernández · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice cada vez me cae peor xD.

[XA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dejen a mi pobre Haru y mi Alice en paz 😭

[Tina Olah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some interesting mysteries and twists in this one. The last couple volumes have also shown quite a few scenes not in the anime!

[Kyra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awkward, because I re-read both this and Vol. 6 at my parents' house in the early hours of the morning but am now back at my own apartment to write my commentary, and. . . I don't entirely remember which scenes were in Vol. 5 and which were in Vol. 6? I am actually sorely tempted to just buy digital editions right now, but that would be stupid. I do remember overall enjoying Vol. 6 more. I know Vol. 5 has the formal introduction of Haru-as-Shion to the other moon dreamers, and various Tamura stuff I don't much care about. There are enough shots of Shion and Rin expressions to keep me fairly happy (I understand that, especially this early in the series, Saki Hiwatari was not like a great artist or anything, but one of the profoundest pleasures of the PSME manga for me is just Rin's face). This is also the volume where Alice meets Haru-as-Shion, which has some good Rin parts as well - and his offer to buy them beer! Oh, and I forgot, where you actually find out that it is 100% Rin's fault that Alice dreamt of Mokuren at all, and that he can't enable her to have any more moon dreams because he doesn't have any more happy memories of Shion and Mokuren to share with her, oh my God, Shion, Rin.

ETA: Needed to wait until I could check this at my parents house, but I need to document somewhere on the Internet: I own this volume in both French and English, because at the time I first got into PSME I didn't believe it was going to be released in English. In the scene where Rin is water-torturing Haru and taunting him homophobically about his relationship with Tamura, in English, he taunts Haru personally by describing him, saying, "On the one hand, we have a cute boy. . . still wet behind the ears!", and in the next panel he describes Tamura. But in French, this same panel has Rin saying, "It would be funny to see Shion with a man." I understand that Japanese is a difficult language to translate into Indo-European languages because there's a lot of ellipsis and things communicated only by implication, which thus requires translators to do some guesswork. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that the French version is incontrovertibly superior to the English version, in this case, I mean, Jesus, Rin, wow! So I wonder: a) what is the literal meaning of the original Japanese and also b) if the original was sufficiently ambiguous to permit the French translation, why the hell didn't Lillian Olsen do so, because it is just amazing how much the French translation of this single panel adds to the scene, the story, Rin, everything. . . .

[✨Sky✨ ♏ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 stars

[Joy Rosales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Justice for Haru!

[Othy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mokuren is probably one of my favorite made-up names :)