The names of the final three chapters are “Heaven’s Roar,” “The Fallen,” and “Love That Lasts a Hundred Years.” Anyone, even someone deaf to the storytelling tropes and directions up to this point, could still write the correct ending just from those chapter titles. They’re perfectly evocative. The entire final volume is an extended death scene
Written and illustrated by Yuu Watase
When schoolgirl Takiko Okuda attempts to destroy her father’s translation of The Universe of the Four Gods, she is instead sucked into the story, becoming the Priestess of Genbu in an epic journey to find the seven Celestial Warriors!
The time has come for Takiko to assume the powers of the priestess and summon Genbu. As war and disaster break out around her, she must choose the three wishes that will save the Universe of the Four Gods. But according to prophecy, to summon a god the priestess must die…
The last volume ended the dynastic struggles of the ruling family, and this volumes ends the war and brings springtime to the land and health to all people, enemies included.
Of course it wouldn’t be an epic ending with two page spreads galore. My favorite spread is from the title of the damn book: Genbu. It appears as a gigantic dragon turtle entwined by a split-tongued snake, and then, to Priestess Takiko, the Genbu appears as a starry emperor god. He allows her three wishes before consuming her.
That word is hard for me: consume. Is it devouring to gain sustenance? To use? A small nosh on her life essence? One fanlation uses devour instead. But the dialog in my copy is this:
Genbu: “I am God of the Seiryu Stars. And I will grant you three wishes. We shall be as one.”
Takiko: “You’re going to consume me. I don’t mind. It’s why I came here.”
I like to think of consume as consummate. Even though consume and consummate (I think) don’t share a common Latin ancestor, in spite of how closely they sound, there’s some wordplay here. Consummating is finishing, completing, and that’s how I’m interpreting what the Genbu will do. He will complete Takiko’s journey. Later, in some afterlife, she can wait for Limdo, whole and undevoured.
Watase starts giving Takiko’s inked outline a much finer and lighter touch as she was slowly dies. At one point her and Limdo nearly merge into the starry background.
The books ends as you expect. The war is ended after the Genbu was spectacularly summoned, and after two selfless wishes were granted, and after the foreign king died and his army left the field. Peace was declared between the two briefly warring nations, as these things happen in fairy tales. Yuu Watasa is not one to lean away from tropes when they suit her purpose in “Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden.”
As I said when I started the Multiversity 2019 Summer Comics Binge, I don’t know much about shōjo manga. That’s partially why I picked this series (which was picked randomly from a list of other shōjo). Before this I had only read a few long running series. “Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” is not my new favorite series, but the act of reading it and struggling to write something vaguely interesting about it every week does mean that I’ll remember it fondly. I don’t know if I learned a lot about shōjo, but between statistics of large faces, an eye for different goals of two-page spreads, and a compendium of translated sound effects, I do have a lot of fun tools to read other manga with. This final volume gave me goosebumps.
Next week I’ll review a final book. “Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” is over, but there is a one shot sequel book, that takes place immediately afterwards. I believe it’s about what Takiko’s not-really-long-lost-love decides to do with the book of The Universe of the Four Gods, that was left to him in a suicide note. I’m expecting the same level of “best intentions eventually leading to good outcomes” decision-making that pervades this series.
