Land of the Lustrous

This is a very subjective, opinionated review. The score solely reflects my overall feeling after having experienced the anime and the manga. There will also be spoilers, so please keep this in mind when reading.

I, like many of the people who decided to read this manga, were people who originally watched the anime and wanted to know where the story goes. I absolutely loved the OST, the animation and the ideas that were being thrown around and just the world building in general. Humans being split into Bones, Flesh and Spirit... How cool is that!

So, I read the manga with the above in mind. I may not have much experience with manga, but even I can tell that the art was really nice. And initially, I was honestly having a great time. I was intrigued by the Sensei’s secrecy, the relationship between the 3 human forms and the balance of the whole “ecosystem”.

However, one thing I left out in my initial impression of the show was how I always felt uneasy about how incredibly mistreated Phosphophyllite was throughout the show. The only time she ever got praise was once she started replacing her body parts with parts that made her “better” (and in turn, cause her to loose her memory, and by extension her sense of self). It was quite easy to drown out this uneasiness when watching the anime, since I was distracted by the amazing visuals and the OST, and she still seemed kinda happy with her “family” so I didn’t think much of it.

The manga makes this whole “suffering builds character” thing much more front and center, especially around the time that Phos finally reaches the moon, and its also the point in the story where I find myself building a distaste for the story.

Another thing that really irked me is the whole "relationship" between the Prince and Cairngorm. It romanticizes their relationship throughout the whole manga even though its predatory, icky and manipulative. I assumed that they would eventually turn this into a plot device later and make Cairngorm "snap out of it" but that never happens. They just end up getting what they wanted even though they backstabbed Phos at every turn. This leads me to my biggest issue.

Phos sacrifices her sanity left and right just so she can finally have some peace with her family, but they all end up betraying her one by one. The story ends up boiling down to a cycle of Phos suffers -> Someone else gets what they want. Rinse and repeat until the story is done. The people who betray her never get punished, but instead get rewarded for it. What was the author trying to achieve here? Are they just trying to say “Humanity bad”? Humans will betray you at every turn to get what they want because they are selfish? No good deed goes unpunished?

The one good thing I was interested in was the world building, and I felt like that took a huge back seat once Phos reached the moon. I felt like the Admirabilis did not get enough development. Outside of the 2 rulers, they felt like they just kinda existed and did not have much effect on the story. Another thing was the whole thing with the ice voices. We learn they are human souls that got trapped in the water, but again, they don’t get used much in the story outside of that. And this whole asspull with the doohickey machine that turns the gems into Lunarians was a stupid ploy to get rid of the whole cast as soon as possible so the author can focus on maximizing Phos’s suffering. It genuinely felt like the first and second half of this are completely different beasts, with the second half being a huge departure from the story that I fell in love with in the anime.

With all of this in mind, why do people love this manga so much? Is this a form of Stockholm syndrome, where people were in such a long cycle of being depressed that they start liking it? It made my blood boil seeing someone who is as happy and innocent as Phos get constantly punished at every possible point (loosing memories constantly, being trapped on earth for 10000 years alone), while those people who became Lunarians were granted their salvation without any price to pay. And after all this bullshit, it all ends with Phos deciding to stay on Earth while its being engulfed by the Sun, essentially committing suicide, because she thinks any form of humanity remaining in this universe is “bad”. This was not satisfying, there were no revelations, I just feel like I wasted my time.

TLDR: Being Phos is suffering, and this whole manga is a massive fuck you to anyone who wants to see her rewarded for her efforts or see her achieving any sort of happiness.