Takopi’s Original Sin

Gr 10 Up–In this stand-alone manga, readers meet Takopi, an alien from the planet Happy on a mission to spread happiness throughout the universe. Takopi wants to repay fourth grader Shizuka’s kindness. However, Takopi doesn’t understand the human world and misses clues that Shizuka is facing constant bullying from her classmates who destroy her school supplies, scrawl things like “die” on her belongings, etc. Shizuka’s only friend seems to be her dog Chappy, and one day she arrives covered in filth with Chappy’s collar. Takopi lends her a gadget, and Shizuka dies by suicide. Using a time-travel gadget, Takopi goes back in time hoping to better understand Shizuka and to make her smile. After making several corrections to Shizuka’s day, there starts to be a glimmer of hope, but readers also start to get glimpses into the life of her main bully Marina and her hatred toward Shizuka. There’s a rough quality to the artwork, making it believably gritty and matching the tone of the story perfectly. The pages themselves tend to be darker than a normal manga, adding a sense of despair that resonates with the characters. Bizarrely enough, despite the violence and trauma of the book, it does end on a somewhat happy note, though not without consequences.