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Jan 16, 2026
This is a simple coming-of-age story that makes very good use of its central metaphor. "What Does the Poisonous Butterfly Dream of?" is a post-apocalyptic story where humanity has almost been wiped out by mutant insects, surviving only due to the parasites that humanity have placed within some girls' wombs that grant them supernatural powers when the girl “awaken” and become “noble butterflies”. The bugs implanted inside these girls-turned-soldiers, who are known as candidates, read to me as a metaphor for puberty and growing up, echoing concerns of how one retains their sense of self while finding their place in the world as an adult.
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The central metaphor being tied into what drives the action of the story is nothing new in anime and manga, everyone knows that the cockpit of an EVA is a metaphor for the womb in "Neon Genesis Evangelion", but what makes "What Does the Poisonous Butterfly Dream of?" stand out is how concise and focused its narrative is.
From the very beginning in chapter one, the parasite inside of the candidates and the transformation it will cause them to undergo being used as a metaphor for reaching adulthood is front and center. The story opens with a flashback between the protagonist Odamaki Ayumi and her friend Reika, during a conversation where Reika compares the parasitic flatworm Leucochloridium paradoxum that grows within the eye stalks of snails, to the bugs implanted inside candidates. The fear of what their transformation into noble butterflies will do to their personhood is present in the story from the first page of the manga. It quickly grounds these fictional concerns later on in chapter one with something more real, by showing that to be a candidate in the underground facility where candidates are raised, known as “The Farm”, is to be a child. It is no mistake that the author chooses to highlight the authoritarian nature of The Farm by having an instructor chastise the entire facility because of the discovery of a vibrator on the premises; to be a child is to have one's entire life largely controlled, including something as personal as one's own sexuality. A slightly crass way of getting the point across, and the manga does feature some unnecessary sexualization of its characters from time to time, but in this case it works for what the manga is trying to say in my opinion.
As the story goes on it continues to follow Ayumi, and her quest to catch up with her friend Reika who transformed into a noble butterfly a year ago. Eventually, when left to die in battle, Ayumi is finally able to awaken. Afterwards, Ayumi fights against the seeming inevitability that the bug that was implanted inside her waking up will mean losing part of her personality as the parasite exerts its control over her. When she moves to The Garden, where all awakened former-candidates live, she is confronted with the fact that all of the noble butterflies take for granted and accept that the bug inside them will slowly eat away at who they once were. The leader of what remains of human society, The Queen Shiragiku Towa, has given herself over to the insect that grants her powers more than anyone else in the story -- and Ayumi is placed into conflict with her due to her refusal to let go of her humanity despite her ascension.
What is here is short, and to the point. I think a lot of people who read this manga are disappointed by the fact that it does not have much in the way of narrative twists and turns, and the climax of the story is solely about a conflict revolving around the interpersonal relationship between two characters instead of something with grander stakes. However, I think if you walk away from this manga feeling the story is unfinished you missed the forest for the trees. The plot of "What Does the Poisonous Butterfly Dream of?" is not a vehicle for cool fight scenes, and the action in the story is constrained to what can serve the narrative the story is interested in telling. The story did not need a grand final battle for the future of humanity, which is where a lesser writer might have taken the plot. Instead, the climax of the story ties into the themes that are present from chapter one of the manga: the idea that becoming a proper adult often requires stripping away parts of yourself until the person that is left can function in a rather cruel and unforgiving world. And hey, what fights the manga does have are extremely cool anyway, so can you really complain? In my opinion, more stories could stand to be as laser-focused as this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 16, 2026
I once saw someone say that Gundam Reconguista in G (G-Reco) was originally planned to be fifty episodes long, before the planned length was changed at some point before production began to be twenty-six episodes -- and I have never felt more certain in a statement being true without looking into the validity of it. G-Reco's pacing issues are, quite frankly, really bad. The show moves at a breakneck speed, with almost nothing in it getting room to breath. What few moments the show does take the time to stop and linger on, often don't hit quite as well as they should, because they simply
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didn't have time to setup the emotional stakes and make the moment land. The show practically feels like a work that was completed, and then was forced to be ruthlessly cut down into half its original runtime. At times, you can quite literally feel where the missing episodes would have gone.
The flip-side of all these issues is however, that Tomino clearly had a vision for what he wanted G-Reco to be -- and he didn't compromise on that even one bit; the show is absolutely jam-packed with interesting ideas from start to finish. In a lot of ways, it is Tomino going over the same things he has been saying in his work since the 1970's: humanity is simply repeating the same cycles we always have even in the face of imminent environmental destruction, and we could perhaps forge a different path if society valued the opinions of the younger generations -- instead of the older generations constantly clinging to and consolidating their power. With Turn A, in 1999, the idea that women's opinions and experiences are also ignored to society's detriment was introduced into his work as a theme, and is also present here. However, just because G-Reco is treading well-worn ground for Tomino, doesn't mean it has nothing of value to add. Beneath the messy pacing and familiar messages, G-Reco is perhaps Tomino's most pointed work yet.
In an interview surrounding the theatrical release of G-Reco, Tomino talked about how G-Reco was a story about environmental concerns. In that interview, he bluntly stated: “The Earth has already been polluted. At this rate it won't last for another 500 years”. This line of thinking is clear throughout all of G-Reco, from the small ways in which we see battles between mecha affecting the local wildlife, to dramatic moments of environmental destruction. However, there's one piece of world-building in G-Reco, brought up early in the show's runtime, that colors the whole work: the existence of the Kuntala, a caste of people who were literally cannibalized during famines in the (by the time of G-reco) relatively distant past. G-Reco is not a show about preventing complete environmental collapse, instead it is accepts the likely inevitably of such a collapse in its very premise. And as the show goes on, it highlights Tomino's opinion that humanity will likely constantly march towards destruction, suffer unspeakable horrors, rebuild, and start the whole process again -- in some of the most dramatic and captivating ways that he has ever managed to express that idea which runs through so much of his work.
In the end, G-Reco has no answers to offer about the questions it poses; Tomino's stated goal, in interviews, that G-Reco was made to get young people to think about environmental issues, seems to be its main focus. Considering what he's been saying in the shows he's been making for decades and decades, it's pretty fitting that, as an old man, his last television show is simply trying to make young people think about the huge issues facing humanity. Did he succeed? Absolutely not. G-Reco was not particularly popular or well received, and I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who would go to bat for it are long-time Gundam fans in their 30's or older. He clearly failed to make the messages of G-Reco resonate with many people at all, let alone the youth. Even so, something truly great was born out of the attempt.
To me, in a lot of ways, G-Reco is the last Gundam show that exemplifies the series as it had been up until that point. I can't help but place it in comparison to The Witch from Mercury – a show that accomplished something Tomino never could, even after his opinions on women's place in society shifted somewhat in the late 90's: it was mostly normal about its female characters. G-Reco, despite the massive improvements from his earlier work, still suffers from writing most of its women characters based on how they relate to the men in their lives, the female pilots are constantly getting saved by their male counterparts while the reverse is rarely true, and many other small misogynistic things here and there . . . and yet, The Witch from Mercury feels like the death of Gundam, while G-Reco feels like the send-off the series deserves. G-Witch is simply devoid of anything interesting to say. It has likable characters, and has sanded away the gross elements of Tomino's shows, but there's nothing left but a polished toy commercial. From the very beginning, Tomino has used Gundam to sneak political themes into the toy commercials known as mecha anime, and he never stopped doing that. In many ways, G-Reco is him doing that at his very best, and Gundam as a series will almost certainly never be able, or even want, to make shows like that without him. That he got do it one last time is something I'm thankful for.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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