The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

My Gemini

What's It About? 

Plain, red-headed, and freckled John has nothing going for him, except his two friends who are incredibly popular at school—twins Jekyll and Hyde. The twins, indistinguishable from each other, have always enjoyed taking each other's places for fun. But when the pair is fragmented by an untimely death, it's up to John to find out…which twin is left.

My Gemini is a manga by Yuu Morikawa. This volume is translated by Emma Schumacker, lettered and retouched by Bianca Pistillo. Published by Yen Press (April 16, 2024).

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Yuu Morikawa's My Gemini is a strange, dreamlike musing on loss and identity. That's perhaps not surprising if you separate Stevenson's themes from the Gothic nature of his tale. At the same time, many lenses have been applied to the original text; we can perhaps most easily look at it as a story of the inherent duality of humankind – Jekyll and Hyde are two "souls" inhabiting the same body. Still, neither can truly exist without the other. That seems to be Morikawa's take, at any rate, as they set their manga in an 1880s British boys' school, where Jekyll and Hyde Stevenson are twins, and John Utterson (the narrator of the original work) is their friend. The three are nigh inseparable until one twin dies in an accident, at which point the remaining twin and John are left to try to fill in a gap that was never there before.

At first, the book seems to be about a sort of basic sense of grief, with the remaining Stevenson and John trying to find their way forward. But as it goes on, things become more complex. Jekyll and Hyde had a complicated relationship when they were little, with Jekyll being jealous of Hyde's more easy-going personality and his ability to interact with people. Hyde suggested they start switching places to counteract that (and his brother's declaration of hatred). Over time, the boys developed almost artificial personalities: "Hyde" always wore his hair like this while "Jekyll" wore his like that, this was "Hyde's" behavior pattern, and that was "Jekyll's." Both personalities became costumes that either twin could don at will, bringing the two of them closer together as almost a single soul in two bodies while shutting out the rest of the world. Only John could always tell them apart, but with one twin dead, even he begins to doubt himself, and the Stevenson brothers' identities become less and less clear. By the end, the remaining twin is essentially living a life like the 1886 original's: two spirits, one body.

It's an odd, almost dreamlike read. Morikawa, whose Mr. Villain's Day Off in no way prepared me for this work, is adept at playing with our perceptions of the twins, and it isn't until the very end that we get a firm grasp on who is left alive and what that means. John becomes both observer and accomplice, and there's a sort of bitter taste of tears deferred that grows as the book goes on. The art captures the time and place nicely, while the translation gives a feeling of being old-fashioned without, upon further examination, actually being so. It's a book that I started off feeling ambivalent about and grew to enjoy more and more as it went on. I'm not sure what Robert Louis Stevenson would think of it, but it's an interesting book, and one I'll be thinking about for some time.

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Lauren Orsini
Rating:

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most well-known books in the world, inspiring countless offshoots—including My Gemini. While this manga borrows names and themes from the classic novel, it is far from a retelling. It captures the source material's gothic mood but not the critical plot point that made it famous. There are no evil alter egos here, just a bit of comic mischief.

My Gemini is set in the most gothic of settings: a Victoria-era boarding school, and its sharp, thin line art brings that elegant backdrop to life. At the top of the popularity food chain are the charismatic twins Jekyll and Hyde Stevenson, but they have a secret: they love to pretend to be each other. When the unassuming John Utterman figures out their game one day in the library, the twins decide to make him their co-conspirator. But when tragedy strikes, it becomes apparent that the identity-swapping game isn't the only secret the twins concealed. Just like John was the only person who could see through Stevenson's games, he may be the only person who can unlock the rest of the story.

The story is told all out of order, often reverting to events in the past, and the result is a bittersweet tale that runs mainly on vibes, not plot. The plot relies on leaving us questioning who is Jekyll and who is Hyde, with so many Uno-reverses that I got dizzy. I found that the more the story was explained, the less satisfying it was. It was better when shrouded in mystery because the big gotcha moments feel out of step with the character's motivations. Additionally, there are two side characters (the school prefects) whose contrasting personalities have the potential to reflect and riff off of the Stevenson's, but who seem to me woefully underutilized.

When I read My Gemini, Jekyll and Hyde reminded me of Migi and Dali, the overachieving twins from Fall 2023's all-too-underrated anime. Jekyll and Hyde also find themselves drawn to the one weirdo at school who can see through their game. However, Jekyll and Hyde don't have a similarly strong character motivation for swapping identities. While it was critical to Migi and Dali's survival that they weren't discovered, Jekyll and Hyde were just messing around.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.