Tasogare-Boshi no Sui to Neri, or Sui, Neri, and the Twilight Planet, is a short, two-volume manga that came out in 2020 and ended in 2021. I only just discovered it yesterday and finished reading it today, and I gotta say, this is a pretty cute, wholesome, underrated sci-fi manga. It centers on a young girl, Sui, and her best friend, a talking sloth named Neri, and the two of them live in a future where people are leaving Earth to go to colonized planets in space. Nowadays, Earth has become inhabited by talking animals and is mainly just a quick pit stop for humansgoing to other planets. But Sui and Neri's lives change a little bit when a woman named Shida books a room at their inn when trying to get to school, and as they become friends, the days they spend together become a little livelier. Don't expect much in the way of a riveting plot here, as this manga is content to be just a series of episodic adventures revolving around Sui and her talking sloth friend.
In a way, Tasogare-Boshi no Sui to Neri is a bit like a lighter, less bleak Girls' Last Tour. The art style and storytelling methods it utilizes relfect this, as similarly to Girls' Last Tour, Sui to Neri is content with not giving you all the answers up front, other than some very vague, subtle clues that let you fill in the gaps for yourself. I think it works here, because the story is told from the perspective of a bunch of kids, who are likely just as in the dark about what happened to their world as we, the audience, are, and they don't see what remains of Earth as a bleak, apocalyptic hellscape. To them, it's just their world and how it's always been. The story doesn't feel the need to try and justify its existence with overwrought backstories or over-the-top technobabble, merely showing how the new Earth functions and how the people and animals still living there live in it. There are things I wish Sui to Neri would explain in more detail, such as how the talking animals came to be, what half the characters' names are, what happened with Sui's biological parents, and how she wound up getting adopted by a family of sloths, but I certainly enjoyed what the manga already provided.
If I were to describe Sui to Neri's art style, it'd be a slightly more refined version of Girls' Last Tour. The human characters don't look as squishy as the ones in GLT do, and they have more details in things like their eyes and bodies. The backgrounds intentionally have cleaner lines than GLT had, with less reliance on cross-hatching for shading and less sketchy, even though GLT used those shading styles deliberately to show how decrepit its world is. The world of Sui to Neri isn't so much dead as it is nearing its twilight years but still functioning. Buildings are old and creaky but still shown as being usable, and again, like GLT, the backgrounds and scenery alone tell you all you need to know about the current state of Earth, even down to things like cracks in stone stairways. The paneling makes every scene naturally flow into the other, and the backgrounds are pretty detailed without being overstuffed, with the few splash pages it has being breathtaking, making them hit at just the right moment. The talking animals are all depicted as cute and chibi, with all of them being friendly and kind to our protagonists.
Speaking of the characters, the trio of Sui, Neri, and Shida, while not the most three-dimensional or layered, are a fun bunch to watch, and the manga is mostly about them interacting with each other and the world around them. Any conflicts they have are pretty down-to-earth and never delve into melodrama. A lot of the solutions to whatever conflicts they face are pretty simple, with the manga not making a huge deal out of them. Plus, with the manga not having anything resembling a big, engrossing plot, the characters don't change much over the course of the series, and any changes they do go through are subtle and understated, which I think works here, since Sui to Neri is more about appreciating what you have, finding the beauty in what's left, and making the most of your situation. I do appreciate that the characters designs are pretty down-to-earth too. Sui and Shida actually look like people you'd meet on the street, or a kid you'd see in a store with their parents.
On its own, Tasogare-Boshi no Sui to Neri is a cute, laid-back, wholesome sci-fi manga that's content to be what it is, answers be damned. Don't go into this looking for high octane action or having answers to everything be spoon-fed to you up front. And don't worry, Sui to Neri has a pretty happy ending, all things considered. It's a nice little children's manga that isn't going to make any waves, but I still recommend it if you want a low-key sci-fi story that doesn't make you want to short-circuit your brain.
