/manga/104763/nande-ikiteru-ka-wakaranai-hito-izumi-sumi-25sai - 'I just end up doing nothing' - 'I'll get up in the count of 3... 2... 1...' - 'Am I the only one who isn't doing anything?' - 'When did I ended up like this?' - 'I'll just cry myself more...'

Does it sound familiar? Did you know the person who said those words? Do you remember that lonely person who suffered with all those bottled emotions?

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The whole manga can be divided into 2 parts. #Story of Izumi, the Loner Izumi Sumi is a 25-year old woman, who works as a part-timer and lives alone. Though I say 'live', it looks more like she's dying everyday. With each day passing by, she sinks more deeper into the depths of depression, anxiety, regret and all those self-destructive thoughts & feelings are slowly making her lose all hope in everyone, everything and of course, in herself. One of the most fascinating things I like about this Manga is how well it portrays Izumi's thoughts & feelings of her daily life. Anxiety, regrets, depression, being alone and being left alone, these are what Izumi formed into. I don't wanna get into the details since each chapter is pretty small (less than 10 pages), so describing them is like spoiling the full story but trust me, it hits hard. It doesn't exactly make your cry but you'll feel the weight of her existential dread. More so, if you had experienced being more alone than before during the quarantine. Here's one such panel & my favourite one (you can skip if you don't wanna read).

Spoiler, click to view

The art is quite simplistic but effective when the scene calls for it and the backgrounds usage helps to set the mood really well too. #Story of Izumi, the Part-timer The rest half of the manga follows her work life in an arcade, with only a co-worker 'Kanade' and her manager 'Kawakami'. Her interactions & thoughts during her work provides a window to know how people with anxiety & depression view the world. This part also dwells into the side characters a bit. While this part of the story still nails Izumi's thoughts, it also tries to give bit of a depth to the side characters and while it still works, it isn't as effective as Izumi or sometimes doesn't seem to be that important or necessary. There are some fanservicy scenes (smh!) that can spoil the mood but doesn't distract you too much from the core, though I really think if it didn't existed all together cause, even though it's relatively small when compared to other ecchi Anime/Manga, it still can break the immersion.

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#Conclusion A short, depressing yet hard hitting presentation on themes of anxiety & depression. It takes you less than an hour to complete it. Give it a try.