We suffer. We always will suffer. Stuck in a perpetual cycle of suffering and attachment, birth and death, we are to be locked to this world, to sit here and suffer.

And yet we laugh, and we smile, and we hug each other in the best and worst times. We greet our friends, we kiss our soulmates, we enjoy good food. We live.

Such dichotomy seems to eagerly flow out of Takopii no Genzai, a dramatic manga with elements of fantasy.
It is a deeply unhappy story, with deeply unhappy people and deeply unhappy situations, yet there is such a faint, but shimmering glimmer of hope in it that almost makes the violence and the tears a simple vignette that forms around our smiles.

It's a bitter fruit. You chew and chew, and nothing good comes out of it. You wonder why you're eating it in the first place. But then you cut the fruit up, you put it in a pot, you bring it to an uncomfortable simmer. Why you're doing so much just to partake in it is a mystery. You take it off of the pot and cool it, a long, equally uncomfortable process. And then you eat the bitter fruit jam — and this is what you wanted from it. This discomforting bitterness seeps into the jam, yet it is equally sweet, equally attractive. It is this uncomfort that may as well frame our lives, and it is this bitter fruit that, often times, we spend so much of our lives looking for.

The manga starts out, perhaps with the most classic set of events. A certain person (in this case, an alien) comes to the rescue of a bullied, "stray animal"-like character, something that will pave the way to a beautiful coming-of-age story. The role of the former takes on Takopii, an alien from the planet Happy, a naive, well-meaning creature; the latter role is left to Shizuka, the daughter of an escort, a victim of relentless school violence and bullying, the only companion of whom is a loyal dog named Chappy.
For days, Takopii does everything in his alien strength to help Shizuka do one simple thing — smile. It provides her with toys and gadgets and tries its best to adjust to the human society, so wildly different from its planet, with never-before-seen concepts of violence and hate. But at the very least, Shizuka seems receptive and appreciative of the alien's efforts, relaying to it some of her inner problems.

And soon after, she commits suicide.

The manga takes a very sure turn into a different direction as Takopii struggles with its constant attempts to prevent the suicide from happening with his gadgets and alien beliefs. Each time, Takopii fails, over and over, and Shizuka constantly goes through a wide arrange of bullying and abuse, a fatalistic cycle.

We see glimpses of the others. A desperate Marina, her abuser, and a desperate Naoki, her benefactor. These are but glimpses, hints at the cracks, not exaggerated but clear and straight to the point. No person in this story ever wakes up feeling happy, at least not until the very end.

The story progresses even further after the manslaughter of Marina by Takopii. The sense of dread in the alien's mind keeps gnawing at it, yet seeing Shizuka so glowing, beaming with a smile so wide, so free of her worries puts Takopii on the road to help Shizuka keep smiling, keep laughing. Naoki is the sole witness, yet feels an overwhelming sense of duty before the frail, dainty girl. He wanted to be of use, for someone, for something.

The thorns before them cut them up and left them bleeding. It seemed as if there was no end to the regret and pain, the desperation, the neverending thirst for something to cling onto, for something to force a smile to grace one's lips. And only after Takopii's self-sacrifice in the end would the victims of the environment, the victims of this world would be granted a bit of respite.

No, their worries were not erased. In fact, they weren't at all eased — this was not a burden to be lifted so easily. Yet the three of them turned to each other, to a faint, ethereal connection between them formed by the naive martyr. There it was, as faint as mist — mutual understanding, mutual sympathy.

Over the course of this manga, Takopii acts as a martyr, bearing the cross of wanting to help everyone be happy. If it meant killing someone, if it meant acting as someone, if it meant being beaten to a pulp, if bringing a smile to the faces of these children would mean being destroyed, then Takopii would gladly be killed. The alien acts as a constant driving force, a bit of lost goodwill, not knowing whether he wanted to help Shizuka or Marina. Yet the realization that happiness is deserved by all, the realization of a non-dualistic world where there is no "good person" and "bad person" moves it to give up its own life to simply see these beaten up souls smile once more. Takopii constantly acts as a fool to the circumstances around them — yet it is this foolishness, this naivete and a bitter willingness to love all that saves the three.

There is so much suffering in the world, yet we laugh. There is so much to love, yet we cry. Happiness is not mutually exclusive to suffering, and even in a life full of suffering we find something to be happy about. These souls feel and understand this to a degree that is sickening and depressing. Yet in the end, that faint glimmer of hope had finally been caught, and the world was anew. The bits of the fruit had finally been simmered, and they could finally breathe and eat the bitter, greatly disconcerting, strangely sweet jam. There will always be this jam at the end — even after the thorns and spikes, the lakes of fire and the trees of swords, the agonizing pain of being, all of it will lead to this sweetness of life. Perhaps, this too was Takopii's gadget from planet Happy.