Name: Spirit Circle Vol. 1
ISBN: 9781626926011

Satoshi Mizukami

Spirit Circle Vol. 1

In the first of its many manifestations, 

presents itself to the reader as deceptively simple--almost to the point of cliché. Boy (Fuuta) meets transfer student girl (Kouko), and falls 'in love' with her within the span of merely a few minutes. We receive a transitory glimpse into what their lives could and should have been -- but the illusion is broken by the two-metre tall, adult ghost (East) looming over the space on Kouko's shoulder. The story moves at a rapid pace from here onwards. Fuuta and Kouko, we learn, are reincarnations of mortal enemies, and have encountered each other seven times prior to their current meeting. Even in their eighth life, Kouko's anger towards Fuuta hasn't yet come to a close. She makes continual references to 

, the first of Fuuta's seven reincarnations and simultaneously a world-ending, near-inhuman sociopath. Fuuta, a cheery, mundane fourteen year-old, is thus forced to bear the responsibility of his past lives and past sins, even whilst he's unaware of what, exactly, he must accept responsibility for.

As Fuuta witnesses more of his past selves, his personal identity begins to fragment. Is he Fone, with his barely-concealed resentment towards Kouko? Is he Vann, the drinker? The mild-mannered Houtarou? Fortuna himself? We see Fuuta's regrets from past lives carried over from one to the next--through a vague yet somehow sharp sense of guilt. His happiness with his friends, a sense of belonging that flows with the same people, through the same lives. His loyalties to children, to those he feels he must owe. To Kouko. With Kouko, in fighting, in death, in birth, in their endless 'river of blood' that, he is told, will never stop flowing. Hey, stranger. It's good to see you again. I'll take your left hand, you take my right: you take my left limb, I'll take your right. An eye for an eye, till the next life, and the next. By subverting the cycle of birth and death, 

 thus asks: if we are reborn, over and over again; if our lives never end nor begin--who are we, exactly? Are any of our choices unique? Are any of our loyalties, our bonds -- truly our own? If we are destined to tread the same paths endlessly and again; what else is there left to live for?

To desire. To imagine, to shape with your bare hands what you then create. To love the people around you, to do your best with the hand you're dealt. This question is first implicitly interrogated in Lafalle's arc, where the rise of automative devices have rendered humans incapable of accomplishing any true feeling. We often hear of 'Robots taking over the world' -- but really it isn't the robots who overtake humans, but rather the humans who let themselves fall behind. 

Humans effortlessly acquired everything they wanted. They lost their desire and their spirit.

 This falls in line with the debates regarding artificial intelligence that exist today. It begins innocuously: in your daily grocery list, then a trip planner, then your job portfolio, smuggling its way through every facet of your life--and you let it. Lafalle's arc further addresses the question with the issue of the non-living, of whom are, as per Spacifica's questions, neither dead nor alive. 

(What does it mean to live? What does it mean to die? Can those who make no progress say they are alive?)

 To live is to thus change, to grow. Just as a plant grows from root to stem, from stem to leaf, so must human beings reinvent themselves every day, break free of stasis.

In Fortuna's arc, the boundary between the dead and living becomes all the more discomfiting. East is, by bare-bones standards of living, physically present, with all his mental faculties intact. This is enough for Fortuna, but not for Koko. She asks 

. Fortuna's stark alive/dead dichotomy comes under obvious questioning here. East may resemble the living, but he is devoid of the very things that make him human: deprived of his five senses, his ability to engage in the things he enjoys. To grow, to progress, to change. Koko asserts this well: 

But he's a spirit. We can't touch him! He can't bake bread! Tell me! What does it mean to be alive?

When Fortuna asks Rune, the ghost bound to him through a familial sort of servitude, if she'd like to have her longtime wish of being a human finally fulfilled, she takes pause. Fortuna has turned the world upside down (literally), torn their found family apart. She wanted to be human in order to hold Koko as she cried when she was a baby. To taste East's bread. To touch what is intangible, to reach the final apex of belonging and community and feeling. To be a human lacking in these is to thus not be human at all, not really.

Fortuna himself may not realise it, but he quickly becomes less and less human as his megalomaniacal pursuits persist -- he first admits his madness, then progresses. Seeking to overthrow the planet's very own guardian, uproot his world and its people if only to propel him to absolute power. Fortuna chases his past happiness -- his past mundanity, his past comfort with Koko, East and Rune -- blindly. Unaware that his intellectual pursuits, him proving his abilities to himself, to the world, him dominating the country with his army of the undead -- will never serve to fulfil him in the way walking through a grass patch did, when the sun was highest in the sky. Watching East, watching Koko, Rune, stand together, laugh together. Unaware that the simplest, most mundane things in life are the ones that fulfil and nourish his insatiable hunger the way anything else will not. 

 thus argues that being alive is inextricable from being human. Of our capacities for love. For growth, for change, for -- and in a way it's devastating, that this is what he really wanted, all along: human connection.

I'M NOT STARTING OVER. I'M STARTING ANEW FROM NOW.

When Fortuna tries in a last-ditch attempt to convince Fuuta's six other souls that the latter's success will lead to their demise -- they each give the same response: 

I'm not starting over. I'm starting now.Spirit Circle

 thus delivers a beautiful message of remaining in the present, no matter your past: no matter your seventh reincarnation, your sins, the weights you bear. No matter if you can no longer go back. To start over implies erasure; implies a displeasure with events in the past, and a desire to reconstruct the past in the present as something new, something you can be proud of where you couldn't before. Fortuna couldn't start over. He'd succumbed to sunk cost and stayed right on his path, leading to his demise. Yet what if there was another option entirely? To start now & to start anew suggests, as with the manga's interpretation of endless life and death, that 

. Your life is an endless stream of choices, of things you can learn from, things you cannot afford to shy away from and have disappear. You cannot start over. It is irrational, no: illogical to presume your life is one of beginnings and endings. But you can start now, make the conscious decision to learn, to grow, to improve. Come out of it stronger. As each of Fuuta's reincarnations disappear from his consciousness, they deliver their final parting words: 

Treasure people. Treasure your friends. Treasure love. Treasure family

. And so Fuuta starts over, and anew. His past lives fade from his memory, but they are never erased. Every lesson, every emotion, every sliver will remain behind his consciousness, and these are principles that can always remain absolute and will never fade. So unknowingly, on the train to Tokyo and beyond, he will look out the window, think of Kouko. And he will remember:

7.8/10

IN THIS LIFETIME.

In the first of its many manifestations, Spirit Circlepresents itself to the reader as deceptively simple--almost to the point of cliché. Boy (Fuuta) meets transfer student girl (Kouko), and falls 'in love' with her within the span of merely a few minutes. We receive a transitory glimpse into what their lives could and should have been -- but the illusion is broken by the two-metre tall, adult ghost (East) looming over the space on Kouko's shoulder. The story moves at a rapid pace from here onwards. Fuuta and Kouko, we learn, are reincarnations of mortal enemies, and have encountered each other seven times prior to their current meeting. Even in their eighth life, Kouko's anger towards Fuuta hasn't yet come to a close. She makes continual references to Fortuna, the first of Fuuta's seven reincarnations and simultaneously a world-ending, near-inhuman sociopath. Fuuta, a cheery, mundane fourteen year-old, is thus forced to bear the responsibility of his past lives and past sins, even whilst he's unaware of what, exactly, he must accept responsibility for.

As Fuuta witnesses more of his past selves, his personal identity begins to fragment. Is he Fone, with his barely-concealed resentment towards Kouko? Is he Vann, the drinker? The mild-mannered Houtarou? Fortuna himself? We see Fuuta's regrets from past lives carried over from one to the next--through a vague yet somehow sharp sense of guilt. His happiness with his friends, a sense of belonging that flows with the same people, through the same lives. His loyalties to children, to those he feels he must owe. To Kouko. With Kouko, in fighting, in death, in birth, in their endless 'river of blood' that, he is told, will never stop flowing. Hey, stranger. It's good to see you again. I'll take your left hand, you take my right: you take my left limb, I'll take your right. An eye for an eye, till the next life, and the next. By subverting the cycle of birth and death, Spirit Circle thus asks: if we are reborn, over and over again; if our lives never end nor begin--who are we, exactly? Are any of our choices unique? Are any of our loyalties, our bonds -- truly our own? If we are destined to tread the same paths endlessly and again; what else is there left to live for?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE ALIVE?

To desire. To imagine, to shape with your bare hands what you then create. To love the people around you, to do your best with the hand you're dealt. This question is first implicitly interrogated in Lafalle's arc, where the rise of automative devices have rendered humans incapable of accomplishing any true feeling. We often hear of 'Robots taking over the world' -- but really it isn't the robots who overtake humans, but rather the humans who let themselves fall behind. Humans effortlessly acquired everything they wanted. They lost their desire and their spirit. This falls in line with the debates regarding artificial intelligence that exist today. It begins innocuously: in your daily grocery list, then a trip planner, then your job portfolio, smuggling its way through every facet of your life--and you let it. Lafalle's arc further addresses the question with the issue of the non-living, of whom are, as per Spacifica's questions, neither dead nor alive. (What does it mean to live? What does it mean to die? Can those who make no progress say they are alive?) To live is to thus change, to grow. Just as a plant grows from root to stem, from stem to leaf, so must human beings reinvent themselves every day, break free of stasis.

In Fortuna's arc, the boundary between the dead and living becomes all the more discomfiting. East is, by bare-bones standards of living, physically present, with all his mental faculties intact. This is enough for Fortuna, but not for Koko. She asks Is East alive? Is he dead?. Fortuna's stark alive/dead dichotomy comes under obvious questioning here. East may resemble the living, but he is devoid of the very things that make him human: deprived of his five senses, his ability to engage in the things he enjoys. To grow, to progress, to change. Koko asserts this well: But he's a spirit. We can't touch him! He can't bake bread! Tell me! What does it mean to be alive?.

When Fortuna asks Rune, the ghost bound to him through a familial sort of servitude, if she'd like to have her longtime wish of being a human finally fulfilled, she takes pause. Fortuna has turned the world upside down (literally), torn their found family apart. She wanted to be human in order to hold Koko as she cried when she was a baby. To taste East's bread. To touch what is intangible, to reach the final apex of belonging and community and feeling. To be a human lacking in these is to thus not be human at all, not really.

Fortuna himself may not realise it, but he quickly becomes less and less human as his megalomaniacal pursuits persist -- he first admits his madness, then progresses. Seeking to overthrow the planet's very own guardian, uproot his world and its people if only to propel him to absolute power. Fortuna chases his past happiness -- his past mundanity, his past comfort with Koko, East and Rune -- blindly. Unaware that his intellectual pursuits, him proving his abilities to himself, to the world, him dominating the country with his army of the undead -- will never serve to fulfil him in the way walking through a grass patch did, when the sun was highest in the sky. Watching East, watching Koko, Rune, stand together, laugh together. Unaware that the simplest, most mundane things in life are the ones that fulfil and nourish his insatiable hunger the way anything else will not. Spirit Circle thus argues that being alive is inextricable from being human. Of our capacities for love. For growth, for change, for -- and in a way it's devastating, that this is what he really wanted, all along: human connection.

I'M NOT STARTING OVER. I'M STARTING ANEW FROM NOW.

When Fortuna tries in a last-ditch attempt to convince Fuuta's six other souls that the latter's success will lead to their demise -- they each give the same response: I'm not starting over. I'm starting now.Spirit Circle thus delivers a beautiful message of remaining in the present, no matter your past: no matter your seventh reincarnation, your sins, the weights you bear. No matter if you can no longer go back. To start over implies erasure; implies a displeasure with events in the past, and a desire to reconstruct the past in the present as something new, something you can be proud of where you couldn't before. Fortuna couldn't start over. He'd succumbed to sunk cost and stayed right on his path, leading to his demise. Yet what if there was another option entirely? To start now & to start anew suggests, as with the manga's interpretation of endless life and death, that Nothing has ended. Your life is an endless stream of choices, of things you can learn from, things you cannot afford to shy away from and have disappear. You cannot start over. It is irrational, no: illogical to presume your life is one of beginnings and endings. But you can start now, make the conscious decision to learn, to grow, to improve. Come out of it stronger. As each of Fuuta's reincarnations disappear from his consciousness, they deliver their final parting words: Treasure people. Treasure your friends. Treasure love. Treasure family. And so Fuuta starts over, and anew. His past lives fade from his memory, but they are never erased. Every lesson, every emotion, every sliver will remain behind his consciousness, and these are principles that can always remain absolute and will never fade. So unknowingly, on the train to Tokyo and beyond, he will look out the window, think of Kouko. And he will remember:

Nothing had ended. You can always start from where you are. Why do we live? Probably...because something good will happen.



Spirit Circle Vol. 1

Reviews

Highlights