なんで生きてるかわからない人和泉澄25歳

NANDE IKITERU KA WAKARANAI HITO: IZUMI SUMI 25-SAI

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
2
RELEASE
March 22, 2019
CHAPTERS
28

DESCRIPTION

Izumi Sumi, a 25-year-old part-timer, struggles through anxiety and depression, pondering the meaning of her own life.

CAST

Sumi Izumi
Kanade Mizuno
Kawakami

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

R2R
83/100
Drown into her depression.
https://anilist.co/manga/104763/Nande-Ikiteru-ka-Wakaranai-Hito-Izumi-Sumi-25sai/
- 'I just end up doing nothing'
- 'I'll get up in the count of 3... 2... 1...'
- 'Am I the only one who isn't doing anything?'
- 'When did I ended up like this?'
- 'I'll just cry myself more...'
Does it sound familiar? Did you know the person who said those words? Do you remember that lonely person who suffered with all those bottled emotions?

The whole manga can be divided into 2 parts.

Story of Izumi, the Loner

Izumi Sumi is a 25-year old woman, who works as a part-timer and lives alone. Though I say 'live', it looks more like she's dying everyday. With each day passing by, she sinks more deeper into the depths of depression, anxiety, regret and all those self-destructive thoughts & feelings are slowly making her lose all hope in everyone, everything and of course, in herself.
One of the most fascinating things I like about this Manga is how well it portrays Izumi's thoughts & feelings of her daily life. Anxiety, regrets, depression, being alone and being left alone, these are what Izumi formed into. I don't wanna get into the details since each chapter is pretty small (less than 10 pages), so describing them is like spoiling the full story but trust me, it hits hard. It doesn't exactly make your cry but you'll feel the weight of her existential dread. More so, if you had experienced being more alone than before during the quarantine. Here's one such panel & my favourite one (you can skip if you don't wanna read).

The art is quite simplistic but effective when the scene calls for it and the backgrounds usage helps to set the mood really well too.

Story of Izumi, the Part-timer

The rest half of the manga follows her work life in an arcade, with only a co-worker 'Kanade' and her manager 'Kawakami'. Her interactions & thoughts during her work provides a window to know how people with anxiety & depression view the world. This part also dwells into the side characters a bit. While this part of the story still nails Izumi's thoughts, it also tries to give bit of a depth to the side characters and while it still works, it isn't as effective as Izumi or sometimes doesn't seem to be that important or necessary. There are some fanservicy scenes (smh!) that can spoil the mood but doesn't distract you too much from the core, though I really think if it didn't existed all together cause, even though it's relatively small when compared to other ecchi Anime/Manga, it still can break the immersion.

Conclusion

A short, depressing yet hard hitting presentation on themes of anxiety & depression. It takes you less than an hour to complete it. Give it a try.
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Goodie1857
91/100
time to find out why i live
This story was something special to me because of the way in which it captured the way in which a person might think. I don’t know if I have depression, have had depression, but I know that the feelings I got from the story were exactly how I felt when I didn’t know where I was going.

A beautiful dialogue

At some point everything around me had changed without me noticing. Most of my friends left the prefecture, while the ones who remained got too busy to even meet. I just laughed along with them, while wondering the entire time why I was even there. Since then, it became increasingly more painful to meet with my friends, and eventually, I became all alone...

The internal dialogues, and that with her co-workers and others was something I found was a beautiful representation of how I feel. All her anxieties, fears, self-doubt, were all put on display to demonstrate how a listless person feels in their daily lives and routine. But I think all of it culminated in telling us about the importance of communication.

Did I have something I wanted to do?
Did my attitude show my motivation?
Did I try to be proactive at all?
The answer is “no” to them all.

Life is all about social interactions, we live the way we do because of the way we have been formed by the world around us. In the same way, we are shaping the world. It’s a two-way street that can sometimes easily be blocked by a truck of your own creation. You must be willing to communicate to yourself, and to others clearly. How else do you know about what you wanted to do? How else can you stop yourself from forgetting who you are? How else can you find more of yourself?

Hope in change

The point is that you should take it easy. If you ask me, it's perfectly fine to keep doing whatever until you find what you like

The message of the story was empowering. There were only really 3 characters with significant perspectives, but I found them all to be important.

Izumi doesn’t know herself, doesn’t know why she lives, and wants to feel less lonely.
Kanade is the same but outwardly appears to be more confident, have more energy.
The manager shares similar worries but approaches them with a carefree attitude.

The present I got from Kanade-chan gave me some room to look past my worries for just a little. And from there, I might be able to stumble upon an opening. Even if it’s just a dead end beyond that opening, even if I don’t know where the path leads to, for each path I take, it’s okay for me to take a small detour, right? Because that’s my way of life right now.

Growing up means we find new ways of communicating.
Izumi begins to hatch out of her shell of loneliness by accepting a new friend.
Kanade leaves her senior co-worker behind and finds a friend instead.
It’s a bittersweet picture of change when we lose those we shared so much with in the past. But we can learn so many new things and feel so many new experiences.

I think it’s okay for me to take a detour too, let’s see what is behind that opening.
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