I can barely find information of this manga online, so here it is. I’ll write about it.
Lemuria: Umi no Mokushiroku is an old school seinen manga by Kishi Daimurou.
OZ was an organization formed by scientists in order to develop clean nuclear fusion power in order for the world to have a safe and clean energy source. However, as the project succeeded and nuclear fusion use became widespread, OZ only wanted to sell their technologies to developed countries, leaving others in poverty and drowning in pollution. Only a handful of people were aware of this, and those that do secretly formed a resistance to combat OZ’s superior military forces.
Major Loid Adler was known in the U.S. Navy as ‘the Pirate’ because of his skills as a tactician, but he’s always stuck being vice captain. One day, Loid’s wife Maya Adler called him over to OZ’s base in Antarctica. He reminisced about how he got married to her: Maya was going to be married off to another man, but he barged into the wedding and took her away, like a pirate kidnapping his beautiful oriental princess.
However, before Loid could even settle in OZ’s base, a coup against OZ occurred, led by none other than Maya herself. Maya led Loid to Lemuria: a super submarine powered by the only one functional zero-heat nuclear fusion reactor ever created. Shortly after assigning Loid captain, Maya died after being shot by OZ’s self defense force. Before her death, Maya had transferred her personality and memories into Lemuria, making Lemuria a submarine with Maya’s soul in it. Loid spent some time trying to cope with his wife’s death and revival as the submarine’s AI.
Things were not easy when OZ’s commander, Mime (his name was pronounced something like Meem but I don’t know what the intended spelling is), needed Lemuria back because it’s OZ’s ultimate weapon in an upcoming biological warfare they were planning. Loid and the crew of Lemuria needed to take Lemuria somewhere safe for maintenance, and stop OZ from taking over the world.
The crew of Lemuria were not an experienced bunch, and the two main operators had never even touched a submarine before. Therefore, they had to regroup with a Major Higgins who’s supposed to be a good pilot, but Higgins and the whole resistance crew not on Lemuria were infected with OZ’s autoimmune influenza thingamajig, so Loid had to steal a batch of vaccines (*should be treatment/antibodies/anti-virals, vaccines are for prevention not treatment) from OZ. He managed to grab a batch, and the manga cut off right there.
The second half of the second volume jumped over to Nagito, a boy living in a fishing village which had just allowed OZ to set up a nuclear plant. He noticed that the sea animals were mutating and developing abnormally, and when he protested building the plant, the villagers tried to kill him because otherwise they wouldn’t get compensation from OZ. Luckily, Nagito had an encounter with Sophia, one of Lemuria’s crew, and became Lemuria’s new crew mate. The manga showed the faces of all the other new crew members.
And then the manga ended right there, saying that ‘if Antartica is lush with greenery, Lemuria will emerge again’ and I was like ‘WTF?’ I think this manga was axed, or maybe the author didn’t want to continue. I have no idea what happened and the author just said ‘this could be a journey without an end’. This looked like it could go on for 80+ chapters and it was just getting to the interesting part. Sheesh.
My problem with this is similar to a lot of manga published in Thai in that era: the translation. I can tell that the translator is not familiar with translating foreign names, so a lot of real-world place names and technical terms are spelled in a weird way (ex. Maldives > Malcheeb. It’s not intentional. The word ‘Maldives’ is written right there in the panel, but the translators didn’t read the English bits). Also, the translation makes no distinction between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion which was a key point in the exposition. Aside from that, the translation is natural and smooth.
I’d give this manga a good rating if we just consider everything that happened before the thing with Nagito, but it’s sad that this manga was axed. I think it had potential, and there were so many unanswered questions about why Lemuria looked like a Cambrian explosion animal and what the heck Mime was really after, and what’s the deal with the other crewmates. I didn’t think I would even like this manga, but it turned out I like it quite a bit.
Would I recommend it though? No, it’s going to be a pain in the ass to get a copy and story was just left dangling there without an actual ending.
The second volume came with a one-shot called ‘Nostalgy Land’. It talks about a 2020 where marriages are three-year contracts that had to be extended. A middle-aged man unable to hold down a marriage yearned for a real family, and so he went to Nostalgy Land, a place where one could experience 1960s Japan. Basically, you pay a sum of money, and a woman and a child will pretend to be your wife/kid for a day/night. The man visited it frequently. One day, he was diagnosed with cancer, and was given a choice of committing suicide or treating it. He chose the suicide drug and went to Nostalgy Land one last time to die with his ‘wife’ and ‘child’.
It was a short story that’s very well-translated, and I think the publisher is finally giving the translator the right kind of job for them lol. Nostalgy Land is a take on a 2020 where people failed to form real connections with each other. Sure, the characters say they love each other a lot, but in the end there was no real feeling behind those words. At least their white lies saved a dying man, though. All in all a pretty good short story.
That was it for Lemuria. In my manga archive, I post about manga I’ve read, and many of them are obscure titles many people would not bother reading. If you’re interesting, please consider following my blog for more ❤
bonutzuu 