This write-up is as spoiler free as I could do it. I would highly advise going into this manga blind if you ever thought about reading it and haven't.

I would love to hear if anyone that reads this write-up has any constructive criticism, a different interpretation or if something I wrote didn't make sense; feel free to send me a message!

After the seed is planted, with enough nutrition and substance, a sprout penetrates the earth, with no clue as to how it will end up. It grows and grows and eventually petals appear - a flower blooms. Vividly it shines in the sunlight, until it starts to pale, wilt and fall to the ground; disintegrating against the passing of time. It's dead, but not gone. Maybe it carried seeds that would grow and continue the cycle; at least it will certainly become what it once came from: the earth, the world. Like all life, it will eventually meet its end, but that end is certainly also a beginning.

“Everything changes”

That's the essence of life, but, as a human, human life feels much more complex and tricky than that of a flower. We have so much more power over the future; desires and so many directions to choose. The flower simply, with its limited virtue, and all of its effort tries to survive.

In a battle it's much easier - win or lose. Land of the Lustrous portrays this difference in existence compared to a battle. A string of decisions don't lead to victory. There is no victory, only a thought of what could've been. Regret. There is just regret, fear, revenge, elation, discovery, and energy to fuel all of these emotions and experiences. But ultimately a grand mystery - the one of existence.

As humans develop, many reach a certain stage where a purposeful occupation becomes essential to feed a sense of continuous development or growth. Because if things feel like they will remain the same nothing will improve. But then, if there is no ultimate right or wrong, no victory to be achieved, what separates growth from change and what makes it positive instead of negative? Such questions are an inevitability in intellectual life. And an inevitability in a world without objective right and wrong. Phos, like a human, struggles with these notions, these thoughts. It is a heavy undertaking, trying to figure out answers to such questions. By themselves they come to a conclusion about the right course of action to achieve an objective, for others, by themselves. It can be easy to, like Phos, become lost in one's own thoughts and feelings, to be stuck focused on a regretful event, not being able to move on, and forget others’ in the process.

Context (SPOILERS):

I think these things are what makes Land of the Lustrous such a human tale. Yet also in the sense that it is created for a human audience through its complex, mysterious world, human (or intriguing, because of their fantasticality; a source of human interest for its perceived impossibility) dilemmas the characters are faced with. It is a tale of changing values, beliefs, and occupations; a quest for truth, ultimately, in all senses of the word, in a world without objectively true answers.

The flower can never be a human, and the human can never be a flower, yet the flower is part human and the human is in part flower. Comparing things through a subjective lens, perhaps believed to be objective, is more inevitable than unreasonable. But as that moment, thought and experience drift past the stream of perception, a new one takes it place, continuously, until it eventually doesn't. Whatever regret, fear, anger, sadness, joy, excitement, anxiety or pain that will come, sometimes in relation to a thought, it is nothing a thought can distinguish, as it's simply a part of the human experience. Whether what has happened has led to regret or elation, it will eventually lead to other emotions, positive or negative, never the exact same as the ones that already passed. One thing that is for sure is that we will one day wilt and become part of the earth. But what isn't is when that will happen. Until then, the only thing that is for certain is this current moment. And it could never have been anything else, because that is a thought and not representative of the current experience of the current moment, as it is perceived. Whether this moment is perceived as boring, depressing or beautiful, one thing is for certain: it is as it is because of the past and our humanity.

“To come to acceptance with things and feelings is rare. And to accept and embrace them completely is a miracle. It’s impossible to make that moment come faster by yourself. Someday it comes unexpectedly. In order to not become warped or heartless, let it go in a natural way. Let yourself feel sad when you are, and let yourself forget when you do.”

If there's one thing I took away from my experience of reading Land of the Lustrous it's this: We are bound by our humanity but we can partly detach from this subjective lens - accept things and occurrences for what they are - and see the world as it is - beautiful