This is an oldie but a goodie! This is an amazing manga and I wish there was more to it. +Anima by Mukai Natsumi revolves around a group of four kids, ages varying from 10 to 17, traveling around the country trying to survive and find others like them. They are called +Anima, humans that can take on the qualities of one specific animal but only one part of them can take on the quality. The placement of the change doesn't move, the placement stays but the +Anima can change the one part of themselves from animal to human and back again.
There is so much to this world that isn't depicted in this manga. It isn't one of my favorites, like top ten kind of thing, but it is an immensely great manga that doesn't get enough attention. The world is interesting and makes me never want to leave, but alas all good things must come to an end.
(SPOILER WARNING! START)
Our story begins with Cooro, who is a crow +Anima. He is on a journey trying o find more +Anima and travel around with them. Cooro goes to a circus in search of +Anima and he finds one as one of the acts, the "Mermaid Princess." Cooro ends up getting captured when the ringleader finds out that he is an +Anima because Cooro was trying to watch without paying and was caught but tried to escape with his wings, exposing himself. The so-called "mermaid" was just a fish +Anima named Husky. Husky helped the ringleader to capture Cooro, hoping that Cooro could help him escape from the circus. Unfortunately, the ringleader is keeping a prized possession of Husky's from him so he doesn't escape, therefore hasn't been able to leave yet.
That night Husky tries to sneak into the ringleader's room and steal back his possession but is caught and tied up the giant fish bowl that is used to show him off as an attraction. In the morning, the ringleader convinces Cooro to act as a messenger of death to kidnap the mermaid princess for a show. Cooro pretends to cry about Husky being tied up and calls the ringleader a meanie, causing the onlookers to be concerned as well. Then Cooro steals Husky's possession off of the ringleader's body since he kept it as a pendant on his neck. Cooro rescues Husky and they leave the circus with Husky getting back what he lost, which was a pair of sapphire earrings, a present from his parents. Thus their journey together begins...
As Cooro and Husky travel together they meet Senri, an older kid who is a bear +Anima and a Kimunkle, we will get more into them later. Cooro and Husky help a village that Senri was protecting and so Senri decided to join them. With the three of them together they meet the last member of their party at a different town after an encounter with some orphaned thieves. Nana, a bat +Anima, was living underground in the town, a group of other orphaned girls living in another section. The other group stole from the boys and then the boys gave chase, going into the underground where Nana stole Husky's pearls, from his days in the circus. All in all the boys got back what was stolen, except for the pearls, and gained another member to their party.
These kids meet a bunch of characters along the way, with no real destination in mind. They also keep trying to get jobs in each place they visit to acquire money for food and other necessities. Soon enough, the reasoning behind each of them becoming +Anima starts to come to light. Nana was almost killed by her drunkard father in the dark woods, she told everyone this soon after she joined them.
There was a mini arc with the group cutting west through Moss Mountains, where the Kimunkle live, a different race of people that live with the spirits, similar to the Native Americans/Indigenous Peoples. It is also said that +Anima originally came from the Kimunkle and that their blood must have mixed with the Astarians, otherwise +Anima wouldn't have started popping up throughout the region. Astaria, the country that the kids are in now, waged war with the Kimunkle many years ago and the Astarians now want to for an alliance to keep out Sailand, the country to the west.
Our little group somehow gets involved with the Astarian military, who they keep meeting randomly throughout their journey, and go with them to Moss Mountain to help the military negotiate with the Kimunkle. As events happens, we find out Senri's backstory. He was part of a tribe on the west side of the mountains, closer to Sailand. His father died due to an outraged, insane bear, protecting Senri, which is why Senri has the eyepatch, the bear slashed his eye. Due to the traumatic event, Senri acquired his bear +Anima but gained amnesia as well.
After Moss Mountain, the kids travel to Sailand, where Husky is from. They go there because Husky wants to check in on his mother so that she knows he's okay. The group has to be careful due to the laws in Sailand, all +Anima and Kimunkle must have collars on, enslaving them to a master. Cooro and Nana end up being saved by a merchant named Crystala, when they went to scout a village nearby, leaving Husky and Senri, who put her collars on them to keep them from being captured by others. Senri and Husky end up captured by hunters and Senri is sold in a market to Crystala, who knew Senri from before. She had originally bought Senri many years prior and helped him a lot, she was the one who gave him the book he treasures so much. Unfortunately, she lost sight of him during one of their excursions to Astaria and had to leave without him due to their time being up.
Senri is happy to reunite with Crystala but Cooro and Nana are still worried about Husky, who had been sold to a wealthy aristocrat in Stella, the capital where the king lives. Cooro, Nana and Senri end up in Stella with another merchant, who also knew Senri when he was young. The kids take things into their own hands to rescue Husky. During the operation they find out Husky's mother is one of the queens of Sailand! They then try to get him into the castle to see his mother. Evidently we find out that another one of the queens tried to kill Husky a year ago, which is why he turned into a fish +Anima and Husky is still traumatized by it. We also discover Husky's true name is Myrrh but is still called Husky anyway. He meets with his mother and all is well until Kazana, another bird +Anima who Cooro and Nana met when they rescued Senri but was part of the operation to get him into the castle, attacks the king.
Turns out, the king and Crystala are twins! The king is very superstitious and believes if one twin dies the other does as well, which is why Crystala is still alive. Crystala is against the +Anima enslavement laws but cannot go up to her brother face to face about it. Once everything calms down, the group heads back to Astaria, where their next adventure awaits...
The story starts to come to a close, with us now focusing on Cooro. There comes suspicion that Cooro is a man-made +Anima after an +Anima only race, where Fly comes in, he researches +Anima and made one of the racers an +Anima by implanting it. Cooro tells everyone that he is born an +Anima but Nana and Husky are concerned because no one has heard of such a thing before. Kids normally turn into +Anima due to being near death and wishing "if only I was a ______." They end up heading to Kilter, the town where Cooro grew up in the church, trying to find out more about him. Through an underground tunnel beneath the church they end up in the research facility in Astar, the capital to Astaria, with Fly who explains everything to them, implanting and taking away +Anima and the fact it was Cooro's job to bring back the +Anima he found to the facility. Nana and Husky originally wanted to get rid of their +Anima but then thought otherwise. Nana got mad at Cooro due to the fact that he was supposed to round them up for the research facility and they left to cool down. While this is happening, Cooro's promise to Fly is underway...Cooro had promised Fly he could have his wings, meaning Cooro is going to give up his +Anima! Cooro asks Fly if he is a man-made +Anima, to which Fly answers yes, that the previous head of the research facility created him and gave him to the church to be raised. The three try to get back into the facility to see Cooro again, unaware of the operation about to happen, but are turned away so they head back to Kilter to use the underground tunnel to get back into the facility. On their way to Kilter they come across another door that leads to the underground where they meet Aaron Newt, the previous head of the research facility. He confirms with them that Cooro is a genuine +Anima since birth, finding him when he arrived in a village called Lilt.
Aaron explained, "In Lilt, when someone dies, their bodies are eaten by crows. What I witnessed.. was the funeral of a young mother who died while with child. The deceased's spirit is taken to heaven by the crows. It must have been no different with the soul of this mother. The baby, whose destiny was to die with this mother... must have wanted to chase after her spirit. His longing must have drawn in the crow anima."
Cooro had already gone through the surgery to have his +Anima taken from him, it's revealed that Fly wanted it for himself, to fly with Blanca, an artificial life overloaded with +Anima. Cooro left to Lilt and the rest chased after him. They find him overlooking the crows flying about and suddenly wings sprout out of his back! He was borrowing the anima of another crow there. They grab hold of him to keep him from flying away with the crows and he regains his anima again. Blanca disappears and Cooro's anima leaves Fly, causing him to fall, but what everyone thinks is that he had gone missing, he doesn't reappear...
(SPOILER WARNING! END)
The manga ends happy with Cooro, Husky, Nana and Senri staying together enjoying life. No tragedy here, just a lighthearted story, that's really a coming of age adventure. All the characters grow as the story progresses and overcome their pasts, coming to accept themselves for who they are, not what they aren't. This manga is an absolute gem, not many remember it, and even less have read it, but this story is one that you won't regret reading. I love this series, I think it should be resurrected, personally. Unfortunately this ten volume manga series was published by Tokyopop, meaning it is now out of print. It is in dire need of rescuing to spread it's journey beyond me and beyond the small audience it has captured.
Thank you for reading! I can't wait to read your comments on this one! If you have recommendations of manga for me to read that's complete, the series isn't ongoing like how One Piece is, then please comment the title and mangaka below and I will review them! See ya next week!
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