Kaikisen

Yosuke Yashiro's family has a strange, unique tradition—once every 60 years, they receive an egg from a mermaid where it sits protected in a shrine. After the egg matures, the family dutifully returns it to the sea, and the process is repeated. In exchange for this favor, the merpeople bless their coastal town with bountiful catches of fish and calm seas.

However, commercial developers encroach on the sleepy seaside hamlet and Yosuke's father is lured away from tradition toward modern prosperity, turning the mermaid's egg into a tourist trap. What will happen to the promise their family made to the mermaids all those years ago?

Included one-shot:
Volume 1: Summer of Tension

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Kaikisen was published in English as Tropic of the Sea by Vertical Inc. on September 17, 2013. It was also released in Italian by Star Comics on August 1, 1998.

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Nov 23, 2012

_Rika

Recommended

If I have to sum up Kaikisen in a few words, they would be: Mesmerizing, Serene, Euphoric, Profound, Phenomenal. A modest coastal town, the tranquil sea and an intriguing legend about a mermaid that engulfs the town. It might not be the most original setting or premise but it is done so well, the first few pages were all it took to draw me into the story.

While the manga’s charm without a doubt lies in the mystery surrounding the mermaid’s existence and her ‘egg’, the characters and their portrayal are yet another of its redeeming points. We have our protagonist Yosuke who is ...

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Nov 22, 2024

Mara2463

Recommended

Tropic of the Sea – Spoiler Free – Recommended

TLDR
Story – 6,5/10 – 6,5 x 0.275 = 1,7875
Art – 8/10 – 8 x 0.2 = 1,6
Characters – 5/10 – 5 x 0.225 = 1,125
Enjoyment – 7/10 – 7 x 0.3 = 2,1
Total: 6,6125 -> 7

Story – 6,5/10
Tropic of the Sea is a one-volume manga by Satoshi Kon himself. It mainly deals with the debate of progress and tradition and about novelty and familiarity. However, Kon incorporates a mythical element in the plot: mermaids and a mermaid egg. Supposedly, there is a tradition in which a mermaid egg has to be returned to the sea periodically (from ...

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Jul 26, 2013

yuridice

Mixed Feelings

Well that was just a little heavy-handed.

Kaikisen: Return to the Sea falls into a classic trap. Is the greedy land-developer character not perceptibly evil enough despite the fact that he literally wears sunglasses indoors? Let's also have his driver almost hit the main character in his fancy car then, just to show that he really isn't someone who cares. It should be enough to let the motives and major actions of your characters speak for themselves, but sometimes authors just can't resist adding that extra little "kick."

Yes, our villain actually kicks a dog.

The absurd portrayal of the people behind the development project ruins what what ... would have otherwise been a relatively reasonable portrayal of the trade-offs between sticking to tradition and accepting modernization. (Well, it would be a little biased still, but we can accept that fiction in general has an inescapable fondness for the days of yore.) Instead, what we get is some hackneyed pseudo-profound mash-up of "respect nature/tradition/something" and "Magic and Miracles are Real!"

The climax and conclusion of Kaikisen, I feel, are similarly poor. A poorly-integrated extended car chase and a gratuitous all-out brawl at a festival might be excused perhaps, but some things are unforgivable. Not only is the age-old (and just absolutely tiresome) trope of Faithful Dog Companion Frees Hero By Attacking Evildoer invoked, but a similarly cringe-worthy moment is when the main villain has a complete change of heart in the space of two pages. And how can we be so sure that he's a good guy now? Well, just look at how sympathetic he looks without his sunglasses! Clearly, the sunglasses had been controlling him all along.

All that said, there is one major redeeming quality. As others have mentioned, the art is superb both technically and stylistically, and the confident linework, solid panelling, and careful shading and texturing can feel like a clinic in how to actually draw manga that looks good. Stylistically it's nothing to write home about, but that's just fine. Not everything needs to look like Gogo Monster or not simple, and if I were to borrow for just a moment that good old MAL system of assigning sub-scores for art, characters, and et cetera, I'd give this a full 10 in that category. First and foremost, the particularly strong art saves Kaikisen from being an unengaging read, but it is also valuable in one other notable respect. The subtly expressive way in which figures are sometimes drawn by mangaka can bring instant yet meaningful characterization to a character if done properly, and some of the best characters of this manga are not the main characters, with the exception of Natsumi, but characters like Yosouke's father, the mermaid, and the less caricatured of the townfolk.

Ultimately, however, it is difficult for Kaikisen to save itself from its heavy-handed moralizing, and while enjoyable enough most of the time due to the excellent artwork, the shallow build-up and entirely empty conclusion will not leave very many readers satisfied.

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