By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting

My Gemini by Yuu Morikawa (same author of Mr. Villain’s Day Off) is inspired by the Victorian-era story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. John Utterson, similar to the novel from what I understand of a YouTube summary I watched prior to writing this, is the narrating character and close friends with twins Jekyll and Hyde. In this one-volume work, the story explores John’s relationship with the surviving twin after the other dies in an accident that is never fully investigated or explained.

At the heart of this story is a struggle with identity: who are you when you’ve lost someone so close to you (in this case, a twin)? A central theme that is explored through the perspective of a child with childish conclusions drawn at the end.

While the premise is intriguing, the story isn’t very effective in exploring this idea. The twins in the story have been repeatedly failed by their parents, who can’t even tell them apart, and by those around them. The surviving twin is consumed by a survivor’s guilt, unable to accept his twin’s death. As a result, he loses himself in grief and takes on his twin’s identity to try and save himself from that very grief. His friend, John, another child, accepts and supports him in this decision, but this only deepens the surviving twin’s fear that he should have been the one to die instead.

This dynamic gives a haunting new meaning to the grave scene that starts the work, re-contextualizing the character as not just burying his other half in the scene but, in a sense, burying himself too.

While the art is great, and the tone and story telling are well paced and interesting, this book is not necessarily a good read. Nor is it memorable in the ways that, for example, Migi & Dali has been. (Not that Migi & Dali was necessarily a good story, but it was memorable.) Rather, ultimately, the story is cruel and doesn’t offer any healthy ways of dealing with grief. While it does explore some complexities around loss, the conclusions are bleak and unsettling. For these reasons, I wouldn’t recommend the book.

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Copyedited by: Krow Smith | @coffeewithkrow and Katherine Cañeba | @kcserinlee