Shimeji Simulation

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I’ll preface all of this by saying that I took about a year and a half long break between starting and finishing this series. I picked it up a couple months before it ended and for some reason I stopped halfway through and only just now decided to finish it. Anyway, it’s certainly one of the most unique manga I’ve read. It’s almost as if Tsukumizu exposited their entire imagination onto the pages when making this, every panel looks like a piece of their mind which works in tandem with the dreamlike setting of the series. 4-koma is probably the most restrictive manga format given ... the limitations that come with having to constrain all of the visuals into such a small space but not for Shimeji. Rules don’t really apply here, the panels are constantly being manipulated and incorporated into the format of their adventure that’s simply fantastic. It never actually deviates from the 4-koma style, each page technically follows the guidelines and yet the rules have been stretched so thin that it nearly becomes its own thing. Again, this works in synergy with the detached reality of the setting of the series and as the world begins to shift further and further into dream this is further reflected in the manipulation of the panels themselves. To take something so grounded and limited as 4-koma and decide to use its limitations to your advantage is a really novel idea but I think it only really manages to work as well as it does because of the kind of story which Shimeji Simulation is.
Again, due to the year and a half break, I’m a little fuzzy on the specific detail of the plot but I don’t think it actually matters all that much. That isn’t to say there isn’t a plot but more that Shimeji revels in its simplicity as a means to feed into its surreal nature. The story is similar to Tsukumizu’s previous work Girls Last Tour which follows two girls in a post collapse world making due in any way they can, surviving only for the sake of it. Shimeji is, admitted by Tsukimizu themselves, essentially the opposite interpretation of that same concept. Two girls explore what was once their completely normal world which has been transfigured into a dreamlike state which adheres to no rules. There isn’t really any significant external threat to them here like in Girls Last Tour but rather the world takes the form of the internal threat of the characters mind. I said it earlier but the manga looks like a piece of Tsukimizu’s mind and because of this it’s capable of perfectly encapsulating the kinds of thoughts and feelings that the characters are going through. The imagery here is very much in your face and not difficult to understand despite being fairly abstract but I believe this is part of the point. We're touring the minds of these characters rather than any specific world and thus having it be front and center makes sense and remains powerful in its execution. It helps that the visuals are simply fantastic to look at. Things freely roam across the entire page, unbounded and ensnaring the work as if it’s some sort of external force manipulating it to it’s will. Works which are typically focused on the mind tend to have a bad habit of focusing entirely on the mind’s impact on the characters but Shimeji decides to explore the mind itself, diving as deep as it possibly can and making the relationship between it and the characters more symbiotic rather than one sided.
Shimeji Simulation is a truly incredible exploration of the mind and lays everything bare for the reader to examine. You can really tell that Tsukumizu put all of themselves into this work, working beyond the constraints of their medium and transforming it into something they can truly call their own. A completely human work.

humans have this strange idea that all movement in one's life can be spurred by a single epiphany. that one singular experience can change someone's entire outlook on life. it misconstrues, stretches, and distorts the value of true growth. growing as a person is earned through a variety of experiences, both good and bad. it's easy to twiddle your thumbs and wait for someone to come save you. it's hard to change your shape.

shimeji simulation pushes the very boundary of what's possible with a 4-koma structure. it's confusing, adorable, heartwrenching, and miserable and will leave you stunned by the end.. all while asking a simple ... question about what it really means to exist. tkmiz has such an incredible talent that's showcased as well here as it is in their other works, being able to write so freely and seemingly endlessly about the confines of our existence. if girls' last tour is about the beauty in the absence of knowledge in life, then shimeji simulation is about the terrifying presence of the unknown. the work feels very personal from all angles, from all of shimeji's introspection to the scenery of loneliness drawn onto the pages. i get the feeling that being able to draw such abstract shapes and concepts is refreshing for tkmiz and that they're really able to express themself more through their art in this manga. it's such an evolution of the style present in GLT that i can't help but once again compliment the experimentation done with the shapes of everything: characters, backgrounds, objects and all. tkmiz has really outdone themself.

the pitfalls of this manga lie in the fact that it takes a bit for the ball to really get rolling. you really need to put about ~10-20 chapters into this before things really start taking off, and the entire experience feels pretty favorable to the ending. it's a worthwhile ending at its core but some readers will have a hard time putting in the investment and that's why i can't recommend it to everybody. if you're really a fan of slice of life manga though, i'd really recommend this for its take and commentary on the formula.

shimeji simulation is a manga, plain and simple. a manga about pushing the limits of what's possible in reality, our hollow loneliness, and the beauty of company. it's a commentary on singularity as human beings. it's an escher painting, penned with impossible complexities and probability and published by love. or.. was it a flounder? i can't remember.

On Way To Language is a book of essays by the famous philosopher Martin Heidegger. Published in 1959, it's a collection of writings and lecturers about language as a whole. The first chapter is titled “Language in Poetry”, where Heidegger starts to mull over the poetry of Georg Trakl.
I encourage all critics, of any medium really, to go read that chapter. It's a textbook example of what pointless overthinking does to a man.

Once I read the first volume of Shimeji Simulation, and after completing the solid Girls' Last Tour, I went on MAL, Anlist, heck, even Goodreads, to gather some opinions about the ... manga.

Almost unanimously, the votes were sky-high and the reviewers' takes were so philosophically charged that it made me think there was some Heidegger gobbledygook going on. Alas, it was. People calling it not a manga, but an experience. Some others calling it just a simple manga, but an extremely important one at that. Others saying that it's pointless to review and that words fail at their job of describing this masterpiece. A few went as far as to say that it's some of the best writing they have ever read and that it changed them deeply inside.
Red light after red light, I started to become increasingly convinced that I was dealing with the poetry of Georg Trakl.
And in fact, I was.

__Spoilers from now on.__

Shimeji Simulation is weird. In both a bad and a good way. Tsukumizu is a genius at drawing and creating wonderful panels, meshing together page layouts and drawings. He's a very inspired mangaka, and there's no discounting his work here. At the very least, he's different and catches your attention.

On the other hand, it's odd in a bad way. As in, it makes no sense whatsoever, it's pointless and dull, with terrible pacing (even though it's a 4-koma!), that does what it does for art's sake.
This isn't necessarily bad, and thankfully it's a short manga at that, but Shimeji Simulation reads more like a prototype, a drawing board Tsukumizu decided to throw ideas on.

So yeah, it doesn't frankly say much at all. There are some interesting ideas here and there, but they converge into nihilism and relativism to the point where nothing matters because everyone can warp reality at a moment's notice. This is bad, very bad, although Tsukumizu does a brilliant job of masking with random ideas and cool drawings. It's still not enough, but I appreciate him at least for trying. If everyone is changing the simulation, nothing even matters. All the pathos goes away from the narration, with only apathy remaining.

Here's a perfect example of this. Chapter 38 has a very captivating premise: collective unconscious, there's stuff beneath the earth that's somehow connected between everyone. That's cool and all… but why? What's the point of digging stuff out when you can just imagine everything you need? What's the point of exploring these weird dungeons when they can go to the school festival with a bunch of imagination-spawned stuff? The entire manga goes like this after the last chapters of the third volume.

There are some good scenes from time to time, especially when dealing with comedic stuff, but when Tsuku goes for philosophical ramblings from the bookworm girl or Shimeji's sister… yeah, it's hideous. Completely irrelevant gibberish with no value whatsoever. It's also very grating on the eyes, some pages are choked full of it for some reason. This is terrible since the pacing goes from fast and swift to slow and crawling at a snail's pace.

Overall, the first and part of the second volume are good, then it starts to get progressively sluggish, before going into pretentiousness overdrive with the dream world. Only by the very last chapter of volume 4 do things get interesting again. Even then, the development is abrupt, and without a decent justification, we have to believe all these new rules that are being established with each passing page. If only there were fewer random pseudo-SoL moments, then that could have worked, but I am questioning if Tzuku would even be able to pull it off.

The last volume goes into overdrive with even weirder, allegedly philosophical stuff. It rings flat to anyone who has read some actual, serious philosophy. Not only that, but it also tries to sound profound and fails spectacularly at that (Chapter 43 with a huge amount of infodumping).

The entire last volume quickly wraps things up in the worst way possible. Nothing here makes much sense. You'll read countless analyses about what happened, and they're all mostly right since you can't make any definitive statements about what is happening in the story. Fire Punch did this better, by the way.

Because of this, I'm not going to bother with arguing why it's all a bunch of gibberish, vague and unintelligible. It's pointless, and an exercise left to the reader. If the game is rigged, the only way to win is to stop playing, after all.
I'll just add that writers, and amateurs in particular, should stick to a few good topics. This mutant of existential ideas is non-comprehensible because there's too much fish to fry. Hilariously enough, everyone will get something out of it because they'll overanalyze all the dialogue, the captivating drawings, the so-called “symbolism”... But that's all there is to it, a bunch of hollow thoughts. Above all, nobody can escape reality, not even Tsukumizu (or his fandom).

It's true, as some reviewers pointed out, that the pages ooze with melancholy, eerie sadness, and pessimism. I don't find they added much to the experience. They were okay. I also kind of loathe the amount of scenes with little girls trying new clothes on. It's more than once and to me, it reads like fanservice. It gets especially bad in volume 5 since there are nude statues and sex scenes between two kids. This might not be that troublesome to a more teenage reader, but I believe it subtracts from the story.
They undoubtedly add nothing to the narration or characterization, so I'd rather not have them in, anyway.

I didn't spend much time talking about the characters because that'd be useless. They are just a pretext not to tell a story (because there hardly is one), but to experiment with the drawings and composition. This is fine, honestly.
For example, Shimeji's sister was interesting at the start, but she ended up doing reality warping stuff, then vanishing from the narration, and then plopping back whenever Tsuku needed her. Very lame and boring.

To explain my disdain for theoretical analyses, just look at chapter 31. It has absolutely nothing to offer to the reader, except for a few Slice of Life elements. And yet, I had to read 15 lines of analysis of the complex meaning behind the kind of nuances of each dress/imagined element. No, that's too much, even for me.

There's something to be said about if this SoL manga is even meant for me. It could arguably not be. But despite what it looks like, I don't think there's much SoL in this manga. There's no “healing”, no interesting or meaningful vertical stories, and no positive outlook that shines upon the reader. There's not even a compelling character that's developed enough, since they are mostly plot devices for experimentation, as I already said.
There is, however, a moderate amount of fun stuff and outstanding panels. That doesn't suffice to me, but oh well.

All in all, I don't think this manga is (that) bad. It's still an experience, and definitely something different from the other stuff. I'm sure Tsukumizu smartly decided to make it short, given that this reads more like an amateur's take on reality-warping relativism filled with high-school philosophy, melancholy little girls, and a sprinkle of humor.

Because it's unique enough and brilliantly drawn, I'd still advise anyone who's a bit tired of the same manga clichés to give this a try. It might be worth it just for the incredible paneling work. But there's no depth of knowledge, no meaningful theories for you here… just a puddle wide enough to let all theorists have fun with their ramblings.
You can choose to view the glass half-full, and it's avant-garde. Half-empty, hipster.

IMO, an even shorter manga (2 to 3 volumes) would have drastically cut most of the worst stuff while allowing Tsuku to go full in with his weird ideas. The 6 pages one-shot was way more compelling than the entirety of the manga, to be frank.

Anyone who wants to read a good manga about these ideas should go and give SOIL a try. I'd also add Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko for the nonsense stuff. It's great. Or, at least, better than this. Lastly, if you want a more horror-y feeling that doesn't overstay its welcome, Wakusei Closet is for you.