#Introduction#

Hito Hitori Futari is a manga by Tsutomu Takahashi. It is a drama with very heavy supernatural and psychological elements. Because on the surface, it's a lot of political conflict. But deeper, it's the story of a man who has learned how much time he still has left on this Earth and has become able to see and converse with his guardian spirit, and how he wishes to use every single ounce of his life left within him to make Japan a better place by steering the country towards denuclearization.

But of course, humans aren't supposed to be able to talk with their guardian spirits. Let alone their guardian spirits actually telling them their remaining lifespan on this Earth. This causes a rather determined opponent who also has supernatural powers to emerge and become hellbent on stopping their progress no matter what the cost is. Additionally, there is of course the general opposing side who views nuclear power very much as a necessary thing to have.

So while you have this war of politics going on, you also have this hidden and unseen spiritual war being waged as well.

#There's just so much going on...#

Okay, now let's see. What the fuck is all in this thing?

• The political war and all of the stuff about the danger of nuclear power.
• The journey of a guardian spirit trying to earn their way to rebirth.
• The story of a man attempting to use the rest of his life to do as much as possible good as he can, however he has to do it and no matter what the price he has to pay.
• The transformation the man undergoes. From useless and openly mocked politician to confident badass who genuinely wants to change the country despite receiving overwhelming resistance from ALMOST EVERYONE.
• "I want to save everyone. But there is a nightmarish entity who is going to actively target everyone close to me to try and stop me."
• Pain and grief, EVERYWHERE AND ON ALL SIDES.
• Supernatural war, light versus the corrupting evil of absolute malice.
• Generally, it's actually a story of "good vs evil" but the "evil side" have very understandable reasons why they're opposing the "good side" yet still manage to be greatly effective as the "evil side."

I usually go more in-depth into the general plot of the things I review than this, but no. Just go read it. If anything in the above list sounds something that would appeal to you, just go and read it. I don't want to spoil literally anything.

#The Art#

I rarely bring up the art in stuff but... I loved every single panel of this. I am an absolute sucker for darkness and as I've already stated, in this manga, it's literally darkness versus light. And it is just...

Yeah okay. Fine. I still have the characters to do, but just take the 10 out of 10 right now. God damn it.

#Characters#

I should go right ahead and say I'm only going to cover the three "main" characters, but there are other characters I also really loved.

First, we have the character the entire manga began with.

Riyon, a spirit forced to become a guardian spirit if she ever hopes to be reborn into the human world. She starts out as a lazy spirit who, in picking the human she was to guard over, actively wanted someone with a very small remaining lifespan. Little did she know, it turned out to be the prime minister of Japan and an entire country's worth of malice and disdain would be coming his way on a daily basis. Especially once he undergoes an awakening of sorts, and tries to actually put his political career and his remaining time on Earth to some use.

As the prime minister's guardian spirit, she struggles to protect the prime minister and battle the ocean of malice that just keeps getting sent his way. Like at one point, the prime minister goes off to inspect a nuclear reactor and as he's going along on this tour of sorts, Riyon is of course right there along with him and she is engaged in a goddamned BATTLE.

This of course finally brings me to the main character of the manga and the human that Riyon becomes assigned to as their guardian spirit. The fictionalized Prime Minister of Japan who was in office at the time of March 11, 2011, Kasuga Soichiro. You're probably curious why I threw out an actual date. Well, I've already sort of touched upon it but. The goal Kasuga decides on after undergoing his awakening by meeting his guardian spirit is that he wishes to steer Japan towards denuclearization. Why is that?

Well, he wishes to prevent any future disasters such as the 2011 earthquake which resulted in the cooling system of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant failing. That's right. This manga is also partly about __THE REAL LIFE COSTLIEST NATURAL DISASTER IN HISTORY__.

So you have this fictionalized version of the Prime Minister who is just absolutely fucked up after this happened, and the fucking entire country hates him or openly mocks him and wants him to resign.

Kasuga sort of then has a near death experience, but Riyon of course saves him, and this event causes him to actually be able to see her and sort of gives him psychic powers of a sort. This leads to Kasuga deciding he'd turn his life around and try and actually change Japan for the better. Even if it meant using his psychic powers and his connection to his guardian spirit to do it.

To conclude on the Prime Minister, I need to say that he does perhaps one of the genuinely most badass things I've seen a character do in a manga in a long while. What, does he defeat one hundred enemies in a single battle while wounded and alone? No. Does he defeat like seventy five, essentially ending an entire school of samurai? No. So what does Kasuga do? He

Finally, we have Kubo Kouji. I don't want to go too far into his character, because I loved him from the moment he was introduced, but let's just say he's an opponent of Kasuga and Riyon. He greatly disagrees with what they're doing or rather how they're doing it, and he along with others set out to stop them. He is perhaps one of the coolest antagonists I've come across in a while, and not only is he super fucking determined to stop the "good side" but he genuinely has completely understandable reasons why. But he is still essentially the walking embodiment of evil, and he is even at one point outright straight up compared to the radiation of the nuclear energy that Kasuga is trying so hard to bring an end to.

#Conclusion#

I fucking loved this manga through and through. I could not recommend it enough, to the point this is the second time I'm giving my score to it in this review, which is in fact again, a 10 out of 10.

I have nothing else to say other than absolutely go read it.