This was a very interesting and prickly one, I’m not quite sure where to put it. It’s a bittersweet romance about Naoki, a homely middle-aged man from the Lost Generation who has essentially failed as a person in the context of Japanese social expectations and more or less given up on himself. In VR, his only outlet (although even here he is solitary) he meets a successful older man, Honami, who has lived a long and happy life but is now separated from his wife and reckoning with cancer. The twist: They both use female avatars. What follows is an unorthodox but genuine relationship that ultimately emerges into the real world.

The story has some issues— there is excessive fanservice in some of the VR scenes early on which I think mars the story and takes away time that could have been used to better explore the way their relationship formed. Things only get really interesting once Naoki and Honami move their relationship into reality. I liked both characters a lot and was moved almost to tears by some sequences in Part 2, when they meet in real life. I related a lot to certain elements of their relationship and experiences.

I will also mention that despite the premise I don’t think the story is at its core a narrative about gender— Honami and Naoki’s avatars are not so much their “real” selves as a reflection of the parts of themselves they were forced to bury by social pressures in the real world. Their love is something that transcends their sex and by meeting in virtual reality they are able to show one another the most beautiful parts of themselves that they’re compelled to hide by Japanese society, and are then able to fully integrate them and fall in love in the real world. As Naoki says, “When we change our forms, we change the places where our hearts connect, too.”

The English edition seems to have been a bit of a flop— presumably most GL readers don’t want to see two unattractive old men and the BL readers, well, same thing. That said, I highly recommend it if this concept is appealing to you. It's a unique piece and I would love to hear other people’s interpretations.

I’ll leave you with an excellent interview with the author, Violence Tomoko, and the official tie-in album by mosaic.wav (?!?!?!) as well as a few excerpts.

“Farewell, my last and final lover.”