[This Communication Impressions] Deluha, thank you

I read This Communication. Kindle sales are great. This contains spoilers up to the final chapter, so if you're interested, please read it while volume 1 is free. You can judge whether it's for you or not from the first chapter. If you're hooked by the first chapter, it remains consistently more interesting than you expect until the very end.

I felt a strange pleasure in the ruthless rationality shown by a protagonist who pushes the boundaries so far that you wonder, is it really okay for this to bear the JUMP COMICS name...!? It feels like what you'd get if you took the conscience out of the Ajin protagonist (Kei Nagai) and gave him military training.

The final stretch felt a little rushed, but it was a wonderful work that stayed true to the core theme from the beginning—that "communication is a misunderstanding"—and yet ended with 100% brightness, showing how those misunderstandings moved the world forward. While I felt a slight hint of that Mamoru Hosoda/Peter Pan-esque resignation—the idea that "adults are dirty" and "children with room to grow are innocent"—the post-reading experience is refreshing.

The comedy of a protagonist with no sense of ethics acting rationally and gaining irrational respect from those around him has a charm similar to "The Saga of Tanya the Evil." Seeing a protagonist who genuinely cannot keep up with the tropes of a romantic comedy, I feel the pinnacle of the "yare-yare" (good grief) type. Maybe he's a "kill-kill" type. I'll stop with the dad jokes and write a proper review.

▼ Deluha, who is never explored in depth

I think this was a rare work where the protagonist acts strictly as a plot device. First of all, we know absolutely nothing about Deluha's past. Other than being a soldier from Switzerland, we don't know his age or race. What's with the pink hair? How is it that in Jump works, I can't narrow down a pink-haired protagonist to just Yuji Itadori, Kusuo Saiki, and Deluha?

For example, if there were a prequel where Deluha was a war orphan who lost his parents and support system to an Iperit attack and joined the military, which is why he's obsessed with "three meals a day," the Huntresses would probably have been captivated in an instant, seeing their own circumstances reflected in him. But Deluha doesn't do that. He doesn't even lie about it. Because the author didn't want him to.

Deluha was a trial, a disaster, a terror, and in a roundabout way, a parent standing in the way of the Huntresses. I have to say he was a plot device for the Huntresses' growth and the salvation of the world.

▼ I don't feel a human presence from Deluha

Regardless, there is nothing depicted as Deluha's "core identity" other than eating. His only desire was "three meals a day." He had nothing else, lived only for that, and would commit suicide if that were taken away.

He has far too little desire for "life." A protagonist who would rather commit suicide without hesitation than face the prospect of "not being able to eat" rather than "living for tomorrow" feels like something other than human. It's questionable whether he can even be called a living being. It's not that he wants to eat for self-preservation, but that he lived because he wanted to eat. In that sense, he has become an existence that cannot be discussed in terms of biological ethics.

The fact that he doesn't want to save the world is the same. He always chooses to live in a way that allows him to "keep eating for as long as possible." There is no emotion involved. I really think his ecology is closer to fungi or an AI...

▼ Communication, trust, and misunderstanding

There are many misunderstandings that Deluha caused the Huntresses to have, but the two big ones are "I want to save the world" and "I love you." It is a comedy where two precious, classic emotions are conveyed to the Huntresses as complete misunderstandings from the protagonist's perspective. The essence of fiction is "tension," "misunderstanding," and the "catharsis" that comes from them. It is a brilliantly constructed work. There are too many masterpieces lately that manage to wrap things up perfectly in this number of volumes. I am happy...

The contrast is also good: while Deluha is a device without feelings of compassion, the Huntresses grow and stabilize their emotions. It is ironic that what the Huntresses, who had been modified to be outside of humanity, needed was not an average person who couldn't accept them because they had emotions, but Deluha, who could observe things flatly because he had no emotions. Neither Deluha nor the Huntresses were accepted by the world, but in the end, they saved it.

▼ Deluha, who died as a device

As the title of this article suggests, it was good that Deluha died. Or rather, I think he had to die. He was a device for the Huntresses' independence, and it is a rule that when a device's role is over, it must exit the stage.

I could have been moved if the final chapter had shown Deluha gaining emotions and looking at the Huntresses who saved the world with eyes of compassion. A happy ending, right? But I'm glad Deluha died. I was saved by the fact that he died as something that lived only for food, without ever acquiring emotions.

I felt that was a salvation for me. A form of salvation that says even if you don't have the same emotions as a human, you can at least be a device for the world. The work tells us that even if you might save the world, every single communication is a misunderstanding anyway. Sincere communication is important, but there is no need to attach emotions to it. If the receiver thinks it is "so," then that is enough. It is fine for me to die as a device.

▼ The world moves through misunderstandings and coincidence

I don't know if the author consciously drew it that way, but it is never explicitly stated that the world the Huntresses returned to was 'the world as it was before.' The Huntresses concluded that it was the original world based solely on the two points that 'time exists' and 'it looks like the same place,' butthe theory that it is a parallel world is highly plausible. After all, the Huntresses actually time-leaped. If they can move in the fourth dimension, the possibility that they have moved in even higher dimensions cannot be ruled out.

There might have been a Deluha who never once thought of the Huntresses during his camping life, a Deluha who didn't build a grave, or Huntresses who aimed for the foot of the mountain instead of the summit when they returned. There must have been a Deluha who did not respond to Yomi's call. Everything overlapped by chance, and that world was saved. It wasn't Deluha's calculation skills or the power of the Huntresses' feelings; it was coincidence and misunderstanding (discommunication) that saved the world.

It was a manga with an amazing structure. I'm going to go read it again. I want to write a slightly deeper impression.

Bye-bye.