I love Goodbye Dystopia (グッバイ・ディストピア) by Hisona. Lovelovelove. Of the manga running in Comic Yuri Hime magazine that I adore, this is by far and away one of the best. 

It begins with a girl waking up after having fallen asleep on a train. She finds her head in the lap of completely strange woman. The girl and the woman get off the train and start to walk together. Where? Why? Who are they?

The girl has left home, because home has left her. The other woman is a wanderer, hunting down mysteries. They walk through abandoned landscapes, find empty homes filled with other people’s possessions, and they speak of very little of importance. After they have traveled together, the wanderer tells the girl that they haven’t shared their names. She, the girl is told, looks like a “Mizuki.” And she can call the other woman “Asami.”

And, so, Mizuki and Asami travel together. They find places to sleep and eat, they take the train and shop at malls, they talk on the phone, and are completely alone with the landscape more often than not, even when there are people around them.

By the end of volume 1 we know almost nothing of substance about either of them. Except, though, that both of them have memories of women in their lives who have, we assume, broken their hearts. Mizuki seems to be running from a failed love, perhaps Asami is running from a loss. We don’t know anything beyond what we see.

Hisona’s art is the exact kind of loose sketchiness I like best, with a heavy focus on plants and overgrown roads and rails as a constant companion to the two women. 

I love that we know so little of them and that they still know so little of one another. I love that, in current chapters, Mizuki is trying to fill in the missing spaces in Asami’s story, and Asami is doing the same about Mizuki, without asking anything, without prying – without ruining what they have right now. 

And I love that, because of the title of the story and the two women’s reliance on themselves, it came as a blow to the head when we saw that phones work and net cafes exist and the mall sold fashionable shoes. Suddenly dystopia looked just like anywhere with (perhaps) more abandoned houses. 

Ratings:

Art – 9 YMMV, but this is right in my wheelhouse 
Story – 10 There is none. I love it.
Characters – 8 
Service – 0 
Yuri – 2 At the moment, it’s in flashback and memory only

Overall – 9

On shelves that are dripping with stories that look and sound eerily similar, this book stands out as truly unique. I will be content to travel with these two as long as they are on the road.