The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

How Many Light-Years to Babylon?

What's It About? 

“Bub” is the last human in the whole galaxy, and he doesn't even know how it happened. After being found in a space capsule, he discovers that Earth was destroyed and that everyone he ever knew is dead. Now, as he travels around the galaxy with his scavenger friends, he's trying to figure out his past, what happened to Earth, and how to best pick up alien chicks (the human race won't repopulate itself, after all).

How Many Light-Years to Babylon? is scripted and illustrated by Seiman Douman. Seven Seas will release the first volume of the manga in print and digitally on December 1 for $12.99 and $9.99 respectively.

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one. How Many Light-Years to Babylon? starts out like an intergalactic version of Interspecies Reviewers, morphs into something vaguely resembling Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker trilogy, and then…I suppose it sort of twists into a time-traveling dimension-hopping story of finding your way back to where you were always supposed to be. The three forms of the story don't always rest comfortably together and it never quite settles on a tone, but it's certainly never boring.

Essentially the story follows Bub (not his real name) on his peregrinations after Earth's untimely demise. Because he's the last earthling, he kinda sorta wants to leave descendants, but finding a lady with compatible equipment isn't easy, although he does eventually manage it. At some point he undergoes a gender change (but it reverses sometimes) to try and be the woman who repopulates Earth instead of the man, but the story takes an abrupt U-turn when he finds that he does, in fact, have kids. So then he has to learn to be a dad to children who aren't all that fond of him, find Fourth Dimension Man to figure out if there's a way home, and in the middle of all of that he's trying to remember his past and why it feels so important to get to someplace called “Babylon.”

To say this is weird is perhaps an understatement. That's not surprising given it's by the same person who created The Voynich Hotel, but that also means that this is definitely a “your mileage may vary” kind of book, because it doesn't really work to say “If you liked X or Y, you'll enjoy this.” I do think it got better in the second half, when the whole Fourth Dimension Man storyline really kicked in, and I very much enjoyed the various creature designs for the aliens Bub kept meeting and/or having sex with. But upon reflection, I don't think this worked for me as a cohesive narrative. It's too disjointed and I didn't find the humor particularly entertaining, and while I liked how it ended, getting there felt like too much work for something I wanted to enjoy – and this is the kind of story where you want to like the journey just as much as where it drops you off when the book is done.

---

Caitlin Moore

Rating:

I'm not familiar with supposed “fan-favorite creator” Douman Seiman, who only has one other work translated into English from his lengthy resume, so I'm not sure I was ready for this one. How Many Light-Years to Babylon? is a quirky, high-energy comic with a distinctive art style and a plot that shifts rapidly from science-fiction sex comedy to a coming-of-age story to a single dad story with elements of the picaresque.

This constant evolution kept me unbalanced, but in a good way. It has a kind of indie feel, uninhibited by storytelling conventions. The first part felt like a sex comedy by way of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the hero Bub, the last remaining human after Earth was destroyed, is trying to keep humanity from total extinction by propagating with every species possible. Although the series ran in Young Champion Retsu, a magazine that just about borders on porn, the sex isn't gratuitous, exploitative, or even particularly explicit.

About a quarter of the way through, the mood shifts, and stops being about Bub trying to screw his way through the galaxy and starts being about him trying to figure out who he is, since he lost all his memories. Despite the sadness of the concept, the storytelling stays brisk and the overall mood lighthearted with only the occasional dip into well-deserved sentimentality. It even made me laugh out loud a couple of times, a rarity even for comedy manga I enjoy. There are asides in the story that seem to have been included just because Seiman had an idea and thought it would be funny, but other seemingly-random points make sense by the end.

How Many Light-Years to Babylon? probably won't grace my bookshelves anytime soon, but it was a fun read and an easy recommendation to others looking for science-fiction silliness. It's a light, refreshing read, and especially worth checking out for fans of Douglas Adams.