Land of the Lustrous 1

This is my favorite manga, no, book by far. First off, the quality of the actual paper it's on is great. It's just like a soft cover paperback book. The cover art is fantastic and speaks for itself. The art of the manga is masterful as well. Haruko Ichikawa draws her characters to be androgynous, which allows her to always adjust her characters' designs while keeping them consistent. In any given page a gem might go from being shown in full with feminine proportions to the next page being shown from the shoulders and above, angling their face, widening their shoulders, and making them look masculine. It's really cool! She also uses shading unlike any other artist I've seen. She doesn't use gradient shading, but mainly uses three shades. She'll use bright white, pitch black, and a shade of grey. Everything is extremely high contrast and you could genuinely use any of her dramatic pages as a background. Lunarians come from the moon in unending numbers, hunting the gems for vanity. The main character is Phosphophyllite, an immortal 200-something year old gem who is extremely brittle with a hardness of 3.5. She's generally apathetic, but due to her weak constitution she doesn't have a job and feels jealous of the others' abilities. Phos eventually finds a purpose in helping another, but isn't capable of doing anything. Here's where the genius of the narrative shines. I'll avoid spoilers because I want people to read for themselves, but here's a vague rundown. Phos tries something extremely risky to help this other gem and ends up losing a large part of her body. The gems' bodies contain their memories and so she loses an extremely important memory regarding this other gem, however she still has the drive to improve, but has lost that impetus. As she keeps losing parts of herself she, well, keeps losing parts of herself. I won't explain any further, but you have to believe me that the narrative is genius. Absolute 10/10, I own all available english volumes and would totally buy them again.

Land of the Lustrous is one of the most unique works available right now, and great for all ages. It's difficult to encapsulate why I recommend this series so much but it more than deserves my effort so I'll give it a shot. The series is about a rock named Phos (genderless because she's literally a rock). She's made from the gem Phosphophyllite which is brittle. Far too brittle to assist the other gems in combating the race of moon people attempting to abduct the gems and take them away forever. At the start of the adventure the useless Phosphophyllite is finally given a job. Phosphophyllite is a protagonist who grows and is allowed to grow, which is something that is becoming increasingly more difficult to find. Her flaws are treated as actual flaws rather than played off as cute quirks. She's allowed to fail and grow past that failure. Not everything works out for her but when it does it's a joy to see. Land of the Lustrous isn't afraid to challenge the protagonist. She struggles, and some of these struggles will bring tears to your eyes. Despite this the series is also one of the funniest I've ever read. It manages to weave in moments of incredible levity even during some of the main character's lowest valleys without losing tone or thematic momentum. There is no tonal whiplash and it takes incredible talent to maintain that balance without jarring the reader. If you want a story where you can laugh and cry, if you want to watch a hilarious yet real protagonist grow after undergoing trial and tribulation, a story more than just black and white, from an author that knows how to hit all the right beats in terms of plot, character, and tone/atmosphere, then Land of the Lustrous should be your next stop.

My daughter is so excited to read these.

I've read the series so far to about book 6 in Japanese. Although the story seems whimsical in the beginning, it gets darker and more intense later on. You definitely want to be in this series for the coming plot, it'll keep you asking for more. The art is of course lovely and well done, and although I have a minor issue with some translation, it's still well thought out and kept to the original. I would have preferred the original title of Kingdom of Gems instead of an alliterative title, but that's just me. The major issue I have is... the cover !! The original books have extremely pretty glittery book covers that I looove to look at ! Of course I understand that this would simply incur more costs, and am happy with the fact that they actually provided some color pages in the beginning, but for me, the glittery covers were something I had really wanted.

Genuinely one of the most well written and beautifully drawn manga I’ve read. Feel in love with the characters and story from the get go and I consider this my favorite for a good reason.

This was one of the truest adaptations of a manga I've ever seen. Great show and just as good in comic form. If you like the show you will have to wait to find out more until additional volumes are released as the 4 volumes available currently on Amazon kindle cover the same material as the show. Bright and sparkly characters (both literally and metaphorically) who are brought to life by a caliber of television 3d that I've only seen marched by shows like Miraculous and RWBY. The animators clearly didn't try to fight the limits of 3d and instead used the stiff nature of the models to accentuate the delicacy of a race of humanoid crystals. Their movement is fluid but controlled which is in keeping with their propensity to break.

I started Land of the Lustrous when it TV series counter part aired 2017-10-07 of last year then thirsting for more from the series I began the journey onto the manga It story captivated me showed me a world filled with mystery and questions for this unique gem trying to find out the reason for all the things she been dealing with but ending up more lost and seeking more questions as she loses herself/his who she/he was, Phos truly captivates the viewers like a beautiful Gem in this fantasy base world this thought provoking story will take you on a ride to the truth. I also have read to Vol.8! so I hope that counts for something.

This book was beautiful,i loved it. It was so interesting to see how phos went with her little adventure in this chapter,And I especially love how dramatic it got(spoilers ahead)When phos got eaten up by a huge snail, her fellow gems had to save her, which took countless hours.And I'm starting to think cinnabar and phos might team up in the future.Anyways,i suggest you get this book, but make sure to read it from (right to left) since thats how most manga books are like.

Einer meiner Lieblingsmanga. Eine sehr geniale, kreative Welt, die hier erschaffen wurde. Relativ simpler Zeichenstil, der sehr ausdrucksstark ist :)

À primeira vista pode enganar o leitor por aparentar ser uma obra bobinha e despretensiosa por conta do design ser "levinho", mas é uma obra complexa, densa, temática e reflexiva. A Phos tem uma bela construção de personagem e um dos melhores desenvolvimentos já feitos, a autora aplicou "Os 7 tesouros budistas" para o desenvolvimento da personagem , então é bom dar uma lida sobre. A única coisa que não se destaca é a arte, mas é funcional.

Arrived quickly and as described, sometimes the translation is a bit odd but that is the price to pay to read this nice story.

Çok kaliteli teşekkürler

Initially very sceptical about the art style and story but genuinely came to love it! I enjoy manga like Berserk, Vinland Saga, and Dorohedoro, so I was surprised at how such a different art style and story actually has its charm and beauty and intrigue. I was sceptical about the story initially as it seems to be more cheerful than my usual go to seinen manga but it actually has an underlying eeriness to it that kept me curious, it reveals a bit of itself and the strange world setting bit by bit. Really looking forward to reading the next volumes!