Fun fact about the first story: one of the hypotheses proposed as a solution to the Fermi paradox states that advanced civilizations inevitably abandon technology and interstellar colonization to develop their spirituality, which is why we haven't met any ETs. I like the zoo hypothesis more, though (see Level E).
The second story reminds me of a famous short story and a manga that hasn't been translated in a while...though to be honest, I found it repetitive after the first few stories.
I heard that this was one of the top-rated stories, and I can see why. My favorites are still "The Gate to Space" and "Fate" (later in the volume), though.
This series needs a bit of background. Hoshi Shin'ichi is a sci-fi writer famous for his really short fiction works. He produced hundreds of "short short stories" from the 1960s until his death in 1997. The short stories have been adapted to various short TV fillers and finally a manga series from 2001 to 2004. A week ago, the magazine Mystery Bonita announced that it was going to resume the series in November after 7 years of hiatus.
As you'll find, the shorts vary quite a bit. I want to say that his style reminds me of Rod Serling's, but only certain chapters, such as "Fate" and "Wonderful Life" share the Twilight Zone feel. Here's the TV adaptation of "Wonderful Life":
This chapter, "The Gate to Space," is fairly different from that. Personally, I think it's my favorite, and not (just) due to its artist. That's why I chose to translate this chapter first. The stories are all unrelated, so order doesn't matter anyways.
My pacing for this series will be fairly slow in these two months, because I don't want to go back on the schedule that I posted, but I'll definitely finish all 18 chapters in this year. I'd be up for a joint project if some other group wants to do one.
My raws are currently unavailable because I'm manually scanning this, but I think I've seen this volume or the other one get uploaded onto Share early this year.
