Depois de uma dolorosa separação, Shiva é incapaz de se conformar com a ausência do Doutor, mergulhando na desesperança. Por outro lado, o Doutor, agora perdido, luta pela própria existência. Os mistérios e segredos do interior começam a revelar-se e escolhas difíceis têm de ser feitas. O futuro, agora incerto, parece estar nas mãos erradas. Será que Shiva conseguirá encontrar um caminho para reverter o que foi perdido?
Este é um conto de fadas sobre dois seres e sobre as manhãs, as noites, a luz e as sombras em que se encontraram.
He studied Fine Arts at Musashino University. At first, he was more interested in illustration, printmaking, and painting than in manga. However, when he considered the best way to make a living from his art, he decided to focus on the world of Japanese comics and trained himself, rather than the usual approach of working for several years as an apprentice to an experienced manga artist.
He was still a student when his first work, The Boss Is an Onee, was published. He soon attracted attention for his distinctive drawing style, his fantastical and melancholic plots, and his use of fantasy characters and anthropomorphic animals.
Well, after eight volumes almost completely focused on the quiet interactions between Teacher and Shiva, they have now been significantly separated thanks to the self-less act of Teacher and Shiva's being captured. I am trying hard to write this without significant spoilers, but it was clear at the end of volume eight that Teacher might never be the same and that Shiva is in grave danger.
Shiva is captured by The Church and imprisoned while we receive a kind of overwhelming amount of information about how the Outsiders came to be; there's an assumption here that what is necessary to right the cosmic ship is to sacrifice the very soul of the little girl Shiva (that's right: The plan is to kill her; I won't say if that happens, but take a look and confirm that two volumes remain. . .).
There may be keys to this manga in the subtitle, "Siúil a Rún," the Irish/Gaelic song, which is to say that Nagabe thinks of her series as a kind of manga adaptation of that song. The title might be translated as "Go, my love," or "Walk, my love."
This is a translation of the chorus:
Come, come, come, O love/Quickly come to me, softly move/Come to the door, and away we’ll flee/And safe for aye may my darling be!
Well, there's been a lot of walking by Teacher and Shiva to flee the Bad Guys in this series. There're also verses such as:
I wish I was on yonder hill Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill Till every tear would turn a mill Is go dte tu mo mhuirnin slan. (translation: And may you go safely, my darling)
And then there's this verse:
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain, I wish I had my heart again, And vainly think I’d not complain And may you go safely, my darling
Here's a link to an analysis of the song, if you want to follow me down that particular rabbit hole:
As to getting all the backstory all in one volume, it's all a little startling. We have gone eight slow burn volumes with, a la fantasy, mostly mystery, mostly beautiful still drawings, as we get hints as to what is going on, but very few words as neither of them are big talkers. Then while we don't see Teacher in volume nine and Shiva is imprisoned we get all this talking from Men in the Church, explaining, in info dump fashion, and not for me all that clearly, how it is this world came to be and why they chased her down and captured her. I have to say I didn't like it much, because I couldn't still repeat the gist of what I read in less than two hundred words.
But the end features the biggest cliff-hanger of the entire series (so far), and it is very interesting. I do think I know what is happening and now we have to wait until late spring 2021 to find out. The drama! So, it wasn't a 5 star volume but it was remarkable in all the words and info and the cliffhanger, and you love that Shiva.
**Warning: there are slight spoilers for the previous volumes**
Now, that's a fairytale series that is more than worthy of getting a decent live action movie adaptation!!!!!!
Premise: The Girl from the Other Side is a sweet, slightly gloomy but engaging fairy tale about a little girl in white (named Shiva) and a humanoid horned black beast (named Teacher) living in a small cottage among the wood, in a world which is divided as Inside and Outside, Cursed and Uncursed.
The people from the Inside fear the Cursed Ones (black and beastly humanoid creatures who wander in the woods) from the Outside, so they protect themselves by surrounding their towns with a great wall to keep the Cursed Ones and their Curse out. But at the outskirt of this wall, live an oblivious little girl who stays with her Teacher and all they have ever wanted is to live in peace.
Review:
The residents from the Inside believe the little girl Shiva can be the cure for the Curse which had long been plaguing them, so their priest planned to break the Curse by...you guessed it, sacrificing the little girl to the Heavenly Father.
Isolated in the castle to await her fate, the girl was visited by a mysterious robed man, did this mean someone else in the castle was questioning the priest's words?
Meanwhile, after losing his soul to save Shiva's life, the Teacher had lost his memory and wandering off into the woods, how long would it take before the Curse overtook him?
The stakes are even higher in this volume, the artwork is still lovely with a haunting undertone in it, though I miss the presence of the other Black Children (especially the Black Child in the form of a giant whale!) but we finally know more about the myths of the Heavenly Father and the Earth Mother (or the Dark Mother) and where the Curse came from, I'm so happy!
The ending part of this volume is so heartbreaking!!!! Please dear author make everything be okay again! Make things okay for Shiva and the Teacher again!!! T_T
PS: I so want to see the other Black Children in the forest again, they are so cool!
Shiva is now a prisoner of the Insiders. Most of this volume is a conversation between the king and the holy leader. His Holiness fills the king (and us) in on the background of the plague and the origins of the Outsiders. Lots of it is surprising. It's quite a lot of backstory in a series where it's been slowly, glacially doled out to us.
The art is fantastic as usual. Lots of nice castle and cathedral imagery.
Oh my gosh. I hate cliffhangers! Especially that I have to wait until April for it to be resolved. Re-read: Still so good. I can't wait to read the next volume.
So...a bunch of volumes moving at a snail's pace, and then the entire backstory in one short, confusing burst? I think that's the only development that could have surprised me, and I am surprised. And processing all the information.
As if Nagabe knew this would be a difficult volume, he gave us those last few pages, though. Whew! Ready for volume 10!
My overall thoughts will be posted at the final volume
Possible spoilers ahead, you've been warned...
Chapters 41-45
That last part of the volume crushed my heart. After the King discovered the real purpose of the priest for wanting to obtain Shiva, which is not her soul but her body herself to turn it into a vessel for the 'Holy Father'. Because of the truth, the King wanted to spare Shiva and bring him back outside the Kingdom. Before the priest managed to complete the ceremony, Shiva managed to successfully escape from inside the wall with the help of the King and one of the soldier. That soldier used to know the doctor Albert, who I suspected was Teacher's real identity.
But what awaits Shiva outside is not something even me, most especially Shiva expected to see. Teacher has turned into a tree. The way Shiva looked was absolutely heartbreaking. She tried to hugged him and apologized. One of the branches moved as if caressing her head, as if trying to comfort her. And from that physical contact, the curse slowly spread across her body. I thought that once she was free of that curse, she was no longer vulnerable but the fact is she once again had a physical contact with someone with the curse and it can still infect her. But personally, it might be heartbreaking to end up like that but having the same fate as the only person who you can be with, I guess that's really not as bad as it seems. There's two more volumes after this but I don't know how the story is going to end.
Devo seriamente smetterla di comprare un volume alla volta perché poi finiscono COSÌ e io non ho il sequel, non so quando tornerò in fumetteria ma l'unica cosa a cui penso è come continuerà
The art is beautiful. That ending, uhm... yeah I need book 10 now. We get more of the lore, but the reason for why the girl is so important is still a bit confusing to me.
I'm so happy, I really am! These are the emotions I've been longing for, it's that fairytale narrative I've been so looking forward to, and to top it all off, these drawings! It's well worth getting to this volume, and I can't wait for the next one.
Se qualcuno ha capito il modo in cui sono nati Relegati e Figli del buio e tutta la storia del padre e della madre me lo spieghi qui sotto così come farebbe con una bambina di cinque anni, grazie.
Mi sono persa un pochino sui vari spiegoni mistici su padre cielo, madre terra, stelle da cui nasce la terra, pezzi delle divinità da cui nascono le anime eccetera. I punti comunque tendono a collegarsi, come ci si aspetta alla fine della serie