Moon Child 13

Wow.  I didn’t realize this was the last volume.  It did not play out at all like I thought it would.  There were two endings, the nice ending where everything worked out like it should in a shoujo series, and then Jimmy’s dream.  With the message of conservation that the series was built on, it almost seems like Jimmy’s dream was the real end to the series and the nice one was the fairy tale.  If that makes sense.  Comparing the two seems like the book’s final message, like the author asks you to think about which one was actually the dream.  Elements of Jimmy’s dream are genuine historical events and the nice ending was… well, basically only possible because of fairy tale magic, which the entire series was also based on, in a sense, and there is the fact that it was a fictitious story with only the barest hints at reality throughout.  Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but I liked that both endings were there.  I’ve never seen another series draw to a close like this, and it is a fantastic twist on tradition.

In short, this series was good all the way through.  It’s truly bizarre in a way that very few other series manage to touch, and the mix of fairy tales and history that come true at the very end, the mismatched romances, the gender identity issues, and the environmental messages… all of it was tied together superbly.  I truly wish CMX would publish more by Reiko Shimizu, especially Kaguya Hime.  I don’t think they will, because I suspect Moon Child sold poorly, but there is a solution to this:  BUY MOON CHILD.  It is fantastic.  You won’t regret it.  Forgive it the bizarre racial stereotype for the matriarch of the mermaids.

I’m going to talk about the ending a bit more specifically now, so I’m going to mark it clearly for spoilers.

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I was pretty blown away by the “reality” ending.  It was incredibly harsh.  All three of the Jimmy siblings wind up with dead lovers, and then are simultaneously wiped out since they are all close to the blast.  Pretty much the entire book leads you to believe that the “Jimmy’s Dream” ending was the real one, and I was quite confused when the fairly tale ending started after the Chernobyl blast.  Shonach and Seth’s story was probably the saddest, since they both got what they wanted in the end, and there’s the possibility that Shonach would have survived if Seth had only revealed that he’d turned into Benjamin and was really Seth and not Jimmy.  Shonach’s suicide when he tells Benjamin that Seth was the one he loved was absolutely heartbreaking.

On the flip side, Teruto got what was coming to him.  Poor Rita finally snaps, and she comes back to commit lover’s suicide with Teruto.  Of course she tries to do the right thing by stopping the tests at Chernobyl, but nothing short of Teruto’s verbal command can stop it.  Too bad that she tells him that Seth is in town right before he dies.  This did a good job of keeping the cruel edge to the series all the way to the end.  It’s hard not to like the cruelty that’s offered throughout.

Art kills himself because he can’t bring himself to live with the fact Jimmy has destructive power and that he can’t stop loving her.  This wasn’t really added to in this volume (most of this takes place during the climax of the last volume), but we do get to see the aftermath of Art’s stabbing.  Little Jimmy crying over the death was pretty heartbreaking.

Then… magically, everything is better, everyone got what they wanted, and there is a happy ending with a new generations of mermaids living their life.  I wasn’t all that comfortable with this solution (complete with characters explaining away obvious plotholes, like how Seth and Shonach had a child and that the power of love kept everyone alive), which is why I was delighted when Jimmy began having her dream.