The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

Cosmos

What's It About? 

High schooler Kaede is hired to use his uncanny ability to sniff out fact from fiction for Cosmos, an intergalactic insurance company, he embarks on a journey that is out of this world!

Kaede's search for a missing classmate leads to the shocking discovery that his friend is actually an alien in a human flesh suit. Grateful for Kaede's help with her case, cute and ruthless insurance investigator Rin headhunts him. Kaede's job interview leads to an epic battle on a commuter train, alien treachery, and a hidden spaceship. But before he can decide whether to accept the position or not, Kaede discovers another alien hidden in plain sight—one with a tragic story to share.

Cosmos has a story and art by Ryūhei Tamura, with English translation by Casey Loe. This volume is lettered by Stephen Dutro. Published by Viz Media (March 4, 2025). Rated T.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Is there anything more thrilling than insurance? Perhaps it's best that you don't answer that. But if there were to be a manga about insurance, the best-case scenario (outside of Master Keaton, obviously) would be for it to be Cosmos, which comes to us from the creator of Beelzebub and Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin. The story follows almost average high schooler Kaede as he gets increasingly involved with Rin, an agent for an intergalactic insurance agency that specializes in aliens moving to or vacationing on Earth. The two cross paths when it turns out that one of Kaede's classmates is from out of town (so to speak), and during their encounter, Rin learns of Kaede's special power: he can smell lies.

The story that follows is surprisingly bittersweet. Kaede's classmate came to Earth to live out a dream that will never be, and the other two alien encounters he has in this volume involve a stranded traveler preyed upon by an unscrupulous resident alien and an extraterrestrial who is dying of what would be a cold to humans. In each case, Kaede provides the plot's humanity in contrast to Rin's more robotic nature, showing the aliens an empathy that they badly need. Insurance companies have an oft-deserved reputation for soullessness when it comes to claims and payouts, and Rin lives up to that stereotype. It's Kaede who shows us that it doesn't matter if someone is an alien or a human, they're still a person.

To be fair, I don't think Rin lacks empathy, or at least the capability for empathy. But she's been trained to be a very specific way, and she takes her job very seriously. She recognizes that she needs Kaede's ability to smell lies, but I think a piece of her may also realize that his bedside manner is also going to be helpful to her. She's not always sure she likes it, as the story about the stranded alien shows, but she's willing to trust him on more than just what he smells.

The bittersweet qualities don't have quite as much weight as they could, although the first and last chapters pull it off better than the story in the middle. Part of that is that we simply don't know enough about Kaede to truly feel their impact on him, so there's room for that to change going forward. The art is fun, although attempts at humor are mixed; Rin's boss making terrible Ultraman jokes is the most successful piece of it, as well as the most overt attempt at humor. This is good enough to give at least one more volume. I wasn't wowed by this first one, but the potential to be more is definitely there.