Fuuta Okeya can see ghosts. Besides that—and the bandage he always keeps on his cheek—he’s a perfectly normal 14-year old boy enamoured with the new transfer student. Unfortunately, Kouko Ishigami wants little to do with him. A strange ghost that follows her, however, seems to feel quite differently. But, when Kouko sees the strange birthmark hidden beneath the bandage on Fuuta’s cheek, she has a change of heart…for the worse. Not only does she denounce him as her enemy, but she claims that the birthmark is a curse she engraved upon his face during one of their many past lives. – ANN
Artist/Author: Satoshi Mizukami
Volumes: 6
Published By: Seven Seas and also available digitally via Crunchyroll Manga
This post was originally written for the April 2019 issue of Mangaverse, the anime, manga, and comics ‘zine published by the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) which I am currently in charge of editing. If you are interested in contributing to Mangaverse, please contact me at jessi@s1e1.com. I am always on the lookout for writers and artists!
This post may have been minimally-edited from its original form to correct minor errors and/or include hyperlinks.
Review: This review discusses some plot and thematic spoilers for the manga series.
It’s uncommon, but there are times where I’ll be so emotionally moved after consuming a piece of media that I become immediately obsessed with seeking out other work by the same storyteller. While my tastes in manga and anime are somewhat broad, there are occasionally certain thematic elements in particular stories that cut deeply to the heart of how I approach the world and its many experiences. It’s in those vulnerable, reflective moments that I feel as though I’ve made a personal connection with an author who’s somehow on a similar wavelength to myself.
Last year saw the release of a lot of excellent anime series, one of which was Summer 2018’s Planet With. The series told the story of an amnesiac teenage boy, his oddball adoptive family, and multiple alien factions arguing over whether to allow humans to evolve or to forcibly contain their violent nature within a powerful Matrix-like illusion. The show was not only razor-sharp with its pacing, cramming 6 months’ worth of plot and character development into 3 months’ worth of episodes without batting an eye, but it stands as one of the few anime series I’ve watched that I’d classify as being “emotionally intelligent,” spending much of its thematic energy exploring the power of forgiveness and acceptance as an option instead of the endless cultivation of hatred and obsession with vengeance. The series was immensely affecting to me; after allowing it to settle for a few days, I found myself consumed with the desire to read more work by Satoshi Mizukami, the author responsible for the anime’s story.
While one of Mizukami’s previous works, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, is somewhat more cult-famous in the West (likely due to both its quirky title and an earlier digital release), I found myself more drawn to the premise of Spirit Circle (its shorter length also helped). The series follows a teenage boy named Fuuta, who’s perfectly average but for the strange scar on his cheek and his ability to see ghosts and spirits. He finds himself smitten with Kouko, the new transfer student, but his overtures are quickly rebuffed when Kouko threatens to kill him. Though he doesn’t immediately realize it, Fuuta and Kouko have a long-running and upsetting history with one-another; they’ve met in several past lives and those meetings often end violently or tragically. Rather than kill him outright, Kouko wants Fuuta to experience each and every one of his previous lives so that he realizes the full extent of his transgressions; she forcibly begins this spiritual journey on his behalf by knocking him in the head with a “spirit circle,” an object of mysterious origins that seems to connect them both.
From the first time that Fuuta inhabits one of his past incarnations, it’s clear that his lifetimes have fallen into certain patterns. He tends to meet the same people time and again; it’s explained that souls will continue to meet when they still have lessons to teach one-another. What sets things in motion is the fact that Fuuta seems to be someone who often questions the accepted realities of the times and places he exists. In one case, he interrupts a violent, sacrificial cleansing ritual, as the spirits he can see (in this lifetime and others) reveal to him that the bloodshed doesn’t actually aid in any sort of protection. In another lifetime (and it should be noted that these are often non-linear and possibly exist in some far-off future rather than only in the past), he questions the belief that the disembodied brains being kept alive artificially are still living beings; is being kept in stasis indefinitely really living?
It becomes clear early on that Kouko’s hatred of Fuuta seems partly based on her own half-knowledge of various situations. In one lifetime she passes away early on, whereas Fuuta’s analogue lives a long life and becomes a very different person than the one she met. In another it’s Fuuta who dies and Kouko who experiences the fallout. In each situation it feels as though some discussion in their part could help resolve the bad blood that’s been festering over the millennia, and there are several points throughout the story where it feels as though a non-violent resolution may be possible with a little bit of work. As Fuuta tumbles ever more quickly to his 7th and final past-life experience, though, what’s revealed is a crime so heinous that Kouko’s sense of vengeance seems more than justified.
In many other manga the final resolution of the situation would likely be wrought through the launching of fists and ultimately the physical domination of the individual found to be in the wrong, but travelling this extremely messy journey alongside the characters reveals that, despite past-Fuuta’s heinous sinning, there may still be hope for a solution that doesn’t leave one of the characters forever locked out of the cycle of death-and-rebirth. It’s this revelation, along with Mizukami’s ability to portray the emotional truth of situations, that turns this from a compelling tale to a truly great one.
The most powerful thematic element at play is that of forgiveness, and even such a seemingly simple concept is treated with a sensitive hand that slowly reveals its underlying complexity. When we think of forgiveness, I believe we often try to couple it with a set of conditions that aren’t emotionally realistic. Forgiveness to many is defined as choosing to allow someone’s trespasses to go unpunished, for the sake of the greater social good and without expecting anything in return. Speaking as someone who’s been harmed deeply by others, this unconditional release of responsibility for perpetrators of that harm is something that I’m personally unequipped to handle. I’ve only recently come to understand forgiveness as something that’s never meant to be a given, but instead is a gift we’re allowed to give to those who’ve done what they can to earn it. When we learn the truth about Kouko’s multi-lifetime grudge, we also learn how justified she is in nursing it. When we experience Fuuta’s story, we also see the diligent work he puts in to try to earn her forgiveness. It’s a delicate balance that could have easily been mishandled, and yet Mizukami allows us to understand a sympathize with both characters to the extent that we believe in their separate journeys.
Without revealing too much about the manga’s most climactic moments, I believe it should be mentioned that perhaps its most powerful statement is that forgiveness is not something only reserved for others, it is also a powerful choice we can make regarding our own actions. I think it’s easy to get caught up in the gravity of our own errors, and once realizing their severity we might spend a great deal of energy trying to apologize for them. While there’s always the danger of trying to absolve our own sins without doing the hard work of atoning for them, I find that it’s more common for people to wallow in their own feelings of guilt well past those feelings’ best-by dates. This story emphasizes that self-forgiveness is one of the grandest gifts that we can give to ourselves – one which is earned alongside the kind of personal growth that we ideally strive for.
This profound emotional gravitas is presented through Mizukami’s simple, straightforward character artwork. While some might find the art style overly-simplistic and possibly even a poor match for the grand ideas being told through the story and dialog, I found the contrast to work very well to present the narrative without a lot of visual confusion. On a related note, the story features a cast of several characters in their different incarnations throughout time, and the character artwork did a good job of preserving the key facial features and builds of the different characters so that they were recognizable throughout these different eras without their names being outright stated every time.
I find that examinations of human nature are oftentimes focused around our negative aspects. While I believe that there are many things we could collectively improve on as a species, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of believing that there may be no hope for the future of humanity. What I appreciate about this manga, and by extension what I’ve been introduced to through other examples of Mizukami’s storytelling, is that it seems to express a belief that we can make the choice to do and believe better about ourselves, and ultimately to learn from our mistakes and choose to forgive one-another for our many collective errors. This is something that I truly want to, and possibly even have to believe; without this small sense of hope to look toward it becomes easy to fall into a depression.
Though Spirit Circle wears the skin of a typical shounen (“boy’s”) manga title, in its heart it stands alongside some of the more universally truthful entertainment out there, revealing the power that exists in eschewing violence and might for the sake of something greater and more enduring.
Pros: The series is profoundly emotional, perfectly paced, and beautifully constructed.
Cons: The character artwork may read too “young” or simplistic.
Grade: A
Content warning for mild nudity and some violence.