Gerekusis

The state we are in is called Gereksiz. It happens in some rare occurences, when someone's presence makes no more difference than if he did not exist, when his impact on the world is completely void. It doesn't matter whether you're a good or a bad person but rather if you're straight in the middle. Tatsumi Onishi had to drop school at 16 to help his father manage his baumkushen shop in order to erase the debt he contracted. He never had a girlfriend or even a real friend for that matter, the first half of his life only being defined by his work at thebaum shop. The day of his 40th birthday is the time where he will try and accost the first woman he ever fell in love with, a stranger that he always sees in the nearby park. Turns out he's the only one that can see her and the moment he starts talking to her, her head distorts into a sort of giant egg. Invisible, unable to see or talk to anyone and stuck in this place for over 20 years with no memory of its identity, in limbo between life and death; at her contact, Onishi will suffer a similar fate, transformed into a weird tiny creature (portrayed on the cover) he will go on an adventure to regain his original appearance back. I love Minoru Furuya's way of dealing with societal issues and outcasts mixed with absurd psychedelic humor, Gereksiz's biggest issue lies in the fact that it very much looks axed and past the initial situation, everything goes at lightning speed, barely exploring its concept or its mystic mythology that it briefly sets up. It just pulls a "it was a dream all along" ending without any character progression which makes it feel like a waste of time since that should be the main focus, I've never been disappointed with him until now. Part of a project for the 15th anniversary of the Evening magazine (15のイフ（if）ニング), my conjecture is that either the series length was planned to be short all along (most authors involved submitted one-shots parodies of their own series) and Minoru Furuya had trouble wrapping it up or his humor wasn't well received by this new public since it was the first time that Minoru Furuya ever published a manga in a magazine that wasn't Young Magazine. A great start that doesn't live up to expectation, a shame because it's filled with set-ups and themes on loneliness that beg to be expanded.