Love can truly take many forms. It’s important to love something in some fashion, whether it’s entertainment, food, etc. In this manga, it’s all about the different types of relationships you can have due to whatever your circumstances are.
Nagabe’s short story collection, however, ain’t quite normal love stories that’s for sure.
Love on the Other Side doesn’t just explore the types of love one can have; it also mixes it between humans and creatures. The first story revolves around Gerda, a young lady with a rare illness, and a large bird named Daisy. While short, this one showcases a type of love that’s more uplifting, as Gerda’s spirits are raised by meeting the bird. Another story that was enjoyable involves a white lion and an young Albino boy. Derided by his classmates and seemingly not loved by his aunt, he spends most of his time either in his room drawing or talking to the white lion. Each have a vague understanding of love, but thanks to their upbringing and dire experiences, they begin to uncover what love truly means.
For the most part in this collection those two stood out for me; the rest, well…vary wildly. The only other enjoyable story involves a blind girl and a vicious monster. How vicious? Well it seemingly goes out every night on a killing spree and makes the blind girl shake hands with a headless man. But, and not surprisingly, a lack of communication — a very common trait in love — makes the two unable to understand what’s going on between them. The twist in that one was set up well, and alongside the art it was at least memorable.
The rest are either forgettable or very questionable. There’s one story revolving around a creature who found a young girl in the trash. That creature saves her…only because it wants to fatten her up before planning to devour her. We have a vampire lord, “Gora”, and a human, Corey, that dance a lovely waltz together. This mainly felt uncompelling as there is supposed to be other creatures attempting to fool “Gora” to think he’s human. The Wolf-Man and the Girl-Wolf was fascinating; a wolf, Joschka, attempts to raise a girl, Gauna, after she was originally raised by a pack of wolves. It reverses the general upbringing by making Gauna act all beastly (she snarfs food with only her mouth in a wolf position, tries to piss like one, etc) while Joschka is the one that’s mostly human, but he questions if he’s the same as the ones who raised him (humans).
And then it does a time-skip and it went from fascinating to creepy. Maybe I could be taking it the wrong way, but after raising the girl on his own he then asks to marry her. Ummmmmm? There’s a part in there where they mention they don’t have to follow the usual traditions of love (like putting on a ring, which he offers and she turns down), but the set-up even getting to that part felt poor, and that’s before getting into the grooming implications that this totally felt like. I’m sure somewhere out there that type of love totally happens, and I’m sure it still will feel quite repulsive.
So all in all, Love on the Other Side is pretty average. The art is super appealing, and with different types of stories we can see the breadth of Nagabe’s styles. This ranges from a vampire lord and a young girl dancing to seeing the true terror of a monster screaming in the woods that looks ferocious and makes the blind girl feel fear. But the manga itself had only a few standouts. It will vary for sure, but in my case, it’s not a strong collection.