Now was that the correct decision? Well, if you gave my rating a glace you might find it a bit ambiguous based on that alone, so that’s why I’m trying to write a somewhat comprehensive review of this. We’ll start with my first recollection though. Was it enjoyable? Yes, I do find this holds up in terms of providing an entertaining read. The concept of our protagonist Gaku gaining, learning, and gradually mastering the quantum arts and using them to resolve a very specific issue is captivating even if not completely sound narratively. Parallel universes are hardly an uncommon setting for soft sci-fi, but this approach to them feels novel – though forgive my ignorance if there are any predecessors. The work that seems most obviously related is Everything Everywhere All At Once as there are a number of similarities in terms of how the parallel universes affect one another. I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that The Daniels were aware of Qualia the Purple, but clearly the way these works operate narratively is quite distinct.
Regardless, watching Gaku attempt to unravel the mystery of Yukari’s death via increasingly strange, off-beat, violent, and physics-defying methods is quite entertaining. All the barriers of normal life have been eliminated, and now Gaku is trying to brute-force a solution like me trying to figure out an inconvenient sliding-block puzzle which is preventing me from advancing in a video game. An easy complaint to make would be that the actual science aspect of this plot is pretty hare-brained. True, this is ultimately pop-quantum mechanics, but, by-and-large, the story does a fairly decent job of establishing the implications of it on the story and progressing upon that establishment. The only irritating handwave – when Gaku identifies a version of her younger self who could do magic (certainly there could be a more quantum-y explanation for that) – is pretty much forgiven by being the prelude to the story’s most hilariously unhinged chapter.
The art is another appealing aspect. Tsunashima’s style certainly belongs to a more traditionally shonen work, and that is what helps heighten in severity the gradual shift in tone from school-age nostalgia to reality-bending lunacy. In particular I appreciate how lithe everything seems and his use of contrast. His blacks are no more black than any other artists’, but his shapes make them feel like the ink is thick and wet on the page. Maybe I could quibble with some of his more abstract screen-tone choices, but that’s just searching for problems at that point. Even when the story moves into the pop-quantum exposition, he can detail frames with cute, digestible renditions of what is being discussed. Up to a point.
That point is where some of the issues arise. Qualia the Purple is based on a novel (originally a short story) by Ueo Hisamitsu. I don’t see any other writing credits either here nor in my paperback copy, so I will assume he wrote this adaptation as well. One other assumption that anyone could safely make after reading the Qualia the Purple manga is that Ueo Hiramitsu is not a manga writer. This appears to be his only credit as such, and it is very clear why. Very little meaningful consideration is made for the artist in this story. Gaku is not simply the protagonist, she is also the narrator. That is not normally an issue, but Gaku’s journey here is not a travelogue. It at many times becomes incredibly introspective, speculative, and eventually very tenuously linked to any kind of conceivable reality. As we enter the second-half Tsunashima quite understandably begins running out of ideas. He is given nothing to work with. He attempts to fill pages with vaguely representative abstractions of what is being monologued about for multiple pages. Panels are chopped up almost randomly. Fully black panels with text boxes are sometimes cynically used by an artist who is already overloaded with doing more important drawings elsewhere, but here they are used by an artist who is justifiably throwing up their hands as they read through a manuscript. I could imagine this story working as a manga, but you need someone more versed in telling a visual story to write it.
Alright, so it doesn’t work very well as a manga. But since the story takes primacy, it must make up for it, right? Look, I already said I was entertained. If that’s the only thing you’re interested it then go for it. I’m going to turn this thing over and shake out the crumbs, so if that seems boring to you then by all means stop reading.
The common distinction between hard and soft science fiction is the realism of it. Speaking broadly hard sci-fi is dedicated to keeping the technology grounded in, well, actual science and the technology that will come with it. Soft sci-fi thinks science is cool and all, but it isn’t going to let it get in the way of a good story. Some would debate the merits of both, but I don’t find that important. Rather what is interesting is what each is intended to do narratively. Hard sci-fi’s purpose is more to examine how technological advancement will change and alter human behavior as it has for all of human history. Soft sci-fi’s purpose is more to use scientific concepts to serve as allegory for human behavior. Obviously, these aren’t strict rules by any means, but I will be humble enough to make this broad pronouncement.
Qualia the Purple falls pretty clearly into the soft sci-fi camp. Even at that, it meditates extensively on philosophy as well. In that case, what is this story an allegory for? If you take the story’s word for it – I don’t want to seem too dismissive or reductive – it seems to be the “power of friendship.” That, frankly, doesn’t track. Other reviewers note that Gaku’s actions go far, far beyond what someone would reasonably do for a friend they’ve only known for a year. Now that criticism in and of itself is reductive. Yukari saved Gaku’s life, altered it in a way that defies any logical sense, and Gaku discovers an amoral conspiracy that kills her as well. Gaku’s escalating inhumanity and progression into greater understanding of her capabilities propel the narrative in a, at the very least, sensible manner to me. Where the disconnect in Qualia the Purple purpose lies is that there is a distinct clear allegory in this story and the writer doesn’t know what it is.
The disconnect is clear somewhat early on. At one point shortly following Yukari’s death, Gaku flashes forward through some 15 to 20 years where she simply moves on with her life. Gaku has a choice for normalcy. That is the hinge of the rest of the narrative. It demonstrates that Gaku does not have to be defined by Yukari or the cell phone embedded in her hand. The manga then proceeds to tell a story where Gaku becomes defined entirely by Yukari and the cell phone embedded in her hand. It’s a comparatively small narrative bit compared to the whole, but it is enough that it punctures the tension. Gaku chooses her inhumanity. That by itself could be interesting, but if that was all there was to it why is Gaku never at any point satisfied? Before she discovers she can move backwards in time, she exacts every conceivable form of justice on those who she believes have done wrong. But it isn’t enough. That isn’t just the power of friendship or love at work.
The actual theme of Qualia the Purple is that of grief and trauma. Gaku, to put it digestibly, is trapped in an endless loop of the first 4 stages of grief and cannot find acceptance. That’s why the montage of a happy, well-adjusted Gaku who fondly cherishes her memories of Yukari muddles the waters to the degree it does. Gaku’s description of Yukari’s inevitable death regardless of how she changes the past is regarded as “fate.” Gaku however is trapped in the vicious circle that anyone familiar with trauma can recognize. She is endlessly reliving it. She is attempting to rationalize it. She is imagining that there is something she can do to change it.
This reading of it feels potent, but here’s the rub. Does Gaku every truly come across as traumatized? At the beginning sure, I’ll agree completely. But eventually Gaku’s predicament feels unmoored from grounded, relatable emotion. The Gaku-plex cooly regards the plot as a very complicated puzzle that they are intent on solving. We’ve already seen that Gaku can simply move on with her life. Gaku is visiting tremendous harm on everyone including Yukari out what is essentially intellectual fascination, not emotional investment as the manga tries to position it as. While the results of this are entertaining, they are hollow. Gaku’s growing inhumanity should feel slightly off-putting, I agree with that. From the perspective of the narrative though, nothing is left to show us what humanity looks like. Everything outside the Gaku-plex is just snippets and vignettes. Tenjou, the only character who could hope to understand Gaku and craft a meaningful, humane resistance to her methods, practically disappears from the narrative, because she, like the rest of humanity, is now just another variable to be accounted for.
That brings us to Alice who serves as Gaku’s “love interest.” Alice provides us with the last sense of Gaku as a human of meaningful emotion and relatable interiority when Gaku gets a call from another Gaku who has realized she has fallen in love with Alice. Gaku is clearly caught off guard and flustered by the awkwardness of being come out to by herself. That’s essentially the last bit of personality Gaku has, as even the prospect of being in love is seized upon by Gaku as a tool for her myopic goal. Alice serves as bookends for Gaku’s predicament. She provides the two keys Gaku requires: the idea that she is a nobody and the skills to render the equation for the theory for everything. For that she is abused, manipulated, and honed by Gaku into a tool.
Gaku achieves Godhood through self-abnegation. I won’t go into the details. The point is that Yukari now survives, because Gaku now observes the entirety of creation. What this means thematically, I don’t know. It just comes across as some hocus pocus. The point is Yukari is understandably disturbed that her friend is also God and has been waiting billions of years for her. She has some good points about how inappropriate all this is, but it is through her compassion alone that Gaku is returned to being human. In this new universe Gaku created, Yukari lives. Thanks to friendship, I think.
Gaku still vaguely recalls the experience which is reasonable considering she had billions of years of memories compressed into a single human mind. But, vexingly, she seems essentially the same person. What did Gaku learn? I don’t know. She was already a good friend in the beginning by my estimates, so learning the power of friendship isn’t much of a moral. She isn’t remotely disturbed by all the things she did. She still witnessed Yukari get killed countless times. It’s a happy ending, but to what end? The quantum puzzle was solved? I did not get invested in these characters because I wanted a quantum puzzle solved. But what I get is a character pushing to the edge of human comprehension and coming back with the same kind of satisfaction as solving a Rubik’s Cube. It’s as if Dr. Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey, instead of becoming the Star Child, simply returned the Earth normally, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to work.
For something where the concept is so fresh and has stuck in my head for a long time, Qualia the Purple’s point is ultimately elusive which frustrates the reading of it. The meaningful, tragic nature of this story is explored, not as the substantial inquiry into the nature of reality and our comprehension of it as it aspires to be, but merely as a curious black box to shake about until a conclusion is dislodged and falls out.
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