Emanon vol. 3

What happens when the woman who can remember everything that’s happened in this world loses her memory?  That’s the premise for this volume as the title character emerges out of the woods of Southern Japan in late ‘73 with no memory of who she is.  Fortunately she meets up with Ryozo, a young researcher who takes her to a nearby hospital. Even though her memory stubbornly refuses to return, she’s plagued by dreams of Earth’s past that only serve to traumatize her.  Good thing that Ryozo’s such a nice guy as he takes her in and they start a life together. Eventually they tie the knot and have a kid together. Which brings on a new kind of tragedy as the woman Ryozo loved becomes a shell of herself while their kid becomes the new Emanon.

I’ll admit that development prompted another slight uptick in my interest for this series.  Mainly because the previous volume’s revelation that the current Emanon’s memories pass into her child’s, leaving her a shell of her former self, created a plot hole when you consider that we saw her mom walking around just fine in the first volume.  Writer Shinji Kaijo looks to be digging into that towards the end of the volume and it provides a decent plot hook for the next volume. Maybe it’ll even tie into the mystery of Emanon’s brother and why he can blow stuff up with his mind.

Before we get to that point, it’s more of the same languid “Emanon” business of the title character hanging out with a guy her age, talking about stuff, and generally being propped up by Kenji Tsuruta’s lovely art.  Even now that the plot has acquired some direction, Tsuruta’s art remains this volume’s main selling point. Which this series has been doing, apparently. Editor Carl Horn explains in his afterword that Dark Horse is pursuing the fourth volume of this series, which hadn’t come out when they licensed these first three volumes.  It makes me wonder why there wasn’t an “…and all future volumes” clause included when this series was licensed, but I’m glad that it looks like we won’t have another Dark Horse manga fading into an indefinite hiatus.