"Kamisama no Shinzou" by Fumino Aya

 Aaand here we are again. As you might have noticed from my previous post, it took me only twenty or so years to cement my otaku credentials and get myself a banner - specifically, some old Comiket paraphernalia which -- I have to say -- looks real good on my wall.

Still, we're all here for the dōjin, and we're starting the new year with yet another 'early work' from a mangaka who, later on, made the switch to commercial work. I was, in fact, sort of familiar already with the name Fumino Aya because a bunch of her manga were translated in Italian, though I don't remember reading anything. I will clearly have to dig up some, because the item in hand for this review is quite intriguing. 

As often happens with mangaka who 'make it', there isn't a whole lot available on Fumino Aya's dōjin activities; their PIXIV is a wasteland, and the Twitter doesn't seem that active either. They do have fairly meaty Wikipedia entry, from which we learn they had an interest in fine arts, something that probably had a bearing on their 2020 debut work Myuuzy no Shinzui. From that same year comes the dōjinshi Kamisama no Shinzou (A5, B&W, 48 pages), a short manga that definitely encapsulate their interest in, as the bio itself put it, "encapsulating daily life".

There is definitely something of early (the good) Asano in this short, charming yet slightly disquieting story about a disillusioned young couple struggling to understand each other on an emotional, and sexual level. It's that sort of melancholic, perhaps a bit darker 'slice of life' that was on display in masterpieces like What a Wonderful World or Solanin: that feeling of having to come to grips with the reality of adult relationships, while still carrying all the emotional baggage of our teenage years. A bit edgy, perhaps, but then again, a flair for the dramatic (as, in the case of this short story, swearing to die together) feels more like a rite of passage than anything else, when we realize it's something we all went through at some point or another. Much like the female protagonist of Kamisama..., who among us never wondered even once if we came across as 'weird' to our partner? 

Short, interesting story for those who appreciate their slice of life with a touch of realism. One last factoid: according to their bio, Fumino is one of Japan's top Puyo Puyo players, and used to spend up to ten hours a day playing it. To each one their own (I'm not looking at my 600+ days on WoW...)