The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

The Wind That Reaches the Ends of the World

What's It About? 

A pair of mysterious and astute travelers ride their spryverns to all corners of this fantasy world! By order of the Sanctum, an international peacekeeping agency, Ral and Jilet cross many nations to edit the Pamphlet, a collection of regional myths and stories. Incredible discoveries await them at every destination, along with clues that may lead them toward the answer to their true quest.

The Wind That Reaches the Ends of the World has story and art by Tsukasa Hazumi, with English translation by Alan Seacord and lettering by Arbash Mughal, and J-Novel Club will release its first volume digitally on October 17

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

At first, I didn't think I would like this manga. Protagonists Ral and Jilet didn't really suck me in as characters. But then something lovely happened: the manga introduced Cambrian lifeforms.

The combination of magic and the Fae with cryptozoology isn't one I'd ever expect to read, but it's fascinating. We see cultures rise around the ability to create pigments made by ancient land-based crustaceans, furred pterosaurs that evolved to survive in the plains of the north, and ancient insects whose power grows such that they could only be considered the King of Fae. It's an amazingly inspired blend, and seeing Ral get excited over documenting these ancient magical creatures just sucks my paleontology-loving heart in. While Jilet and Ral themselves never become the most compelling characters, the world around them makes up for it.

The art is fantastic, really bringing the natural world and the cultures that inhabit it to life. There's lots of love lavished onto the critters that Ral encounters, too. I'm a bit iffy on how this manga starts, but I feel like it could go into some really fun territory. Strongly recommended.

---

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Jilet and Ral travel the world in search of folktales for their employers at the Sanctum, a governing body that appears to be roughly analogous to the U.N. They say that they're doing this for a pamphlet, so that the people at the Sanctum can compare legend with history. But in reality they appear to be tracing the journey of a mysterious person who left behind a journal, and there's something to do with the fae going on, too. As Ral learns more about the ways folklore blends with reality, they seem to be on track to piecing together the true history of their world, but is that what they're truly trying to do?

I recognize that I'm absolutely the target audience for this story – as someone who studies folk-and-fairy tales, the idea of folklore collecting in a fantasy world is vastly appealing, and watching Ral figure out how each of the regional legends he learns actually play into the history they've been drawn from is fascinating and very true to the way folklorists work in our world, albeit with fewer fairies and dragons. But the underlying story, which we're still a bit in the dark about when the volume ends, is just as interesting, because it speaks to the possibility that all of the myths and legends may actually be true on a very different level. When Ral meets the fae Offacolus in a forest the locals want to destroy, it starts to seem like there may be an environmental fairy tale being played out as well, where the humans and their developing technology are posing a threat to the magic of the fair folk. The first and last stories both use this as an underlying theme, which makes me think this story may have a deeper meaning waiting in the wings.

But it's also about the very human urge to fear that which we don't understand. Ral, as a half-fae, certainly knows a little something about this, and his strong companion Jilet definitely has had her fair share of being told that she's “just” a woman and therefore incapable before scaring the crap out of people who underestimated her. The way this plot point is interwoven with the fact that the earliest versions of fairy tales are often the darkest works very well, as does the detailed, ink-heavy art for the book. This feels like a series that understands folklore and the darkness of both fiction and reality, and if you're a fan of fairy tales and their history, it's definitely worth reading.

---

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Folktales passed down through generations can often be unreliable windows into history; after all, like a game of telephone, every person a story passes through results in more and more information getting removed or altered. But there's still a lot that can be found in them, truths that can speak to situations even in the present day, which I think is one of the main messages The Wind That Reaches the Ends of the World tries to communicate. This is a story that is similar in vein to other supernatural journey stories like Kino's Journey and Mushi-Shi, albeit a bit more on the generic side. We have two very likable leads traveling from town to town and trying to solve problems, usually by figuring out some missing piece of that town or village's history. A lot of the appeal comes into how the world gets built through the stories and when you take a step back, everything feels very rich and lived-in.

This is thanks in part to the amazingly detailed artwork and rich backgrounds. Every location in each chapter feels distinct and alive. While I do think the writing could be tighter, and it would have benefited from a few more memorable characters outside of just our two leads, the atmosphere more than makes up for it. If you're a fan of these types of globetrotting stories, then I think this has just enough to scratch that itch.