I am very impressed with this manhwa for going from a teenagersinahighschool setting to ontherunfugitivechasescenes without missing a beat or falling off track. I am not an attentive person and I lack the focus needed to binge thingsas a result Ive only ever binged five things in my life. This is that fifth thing taking up six hours of my life from eleven at night yesterday to four in the morning today. This manhwas strength is in its ability to make all of these story transitions believable without taking the reader out of the immersion. None of the characters in Normal City are good peopledarling protagonist Mars Haven takes the cake for ruthlessness about three volumes into the story. But theyre honest and never lie about who they are. As such I am not shocked when the situation goes from worse to even worse. It is to be expected when each of the central characters sets in place their own vice to later fuel important story outcomes. The story starts off with an inductroduction to Mars Haven a sixteen year old girl from Mars and her two best friends Sion and Jean traveling down from Mars to live in Normal City the series namesake. The trio are ESPerspeople treated as inhuman for their psychic abilities and placed under the care of an organization until they are deemed worthy to be freemen and live openly in society at the cost of freely using their psychic powers. The scene that kicks off the story is the introduction of a new team membera teenage ESPer by the name of Isha Green and the teams first male member. I want to emphasize several things about Isha Green. One that he is considered to be one of the more boring characters in the story. Two that this detail is not a dealbreaker because he serves his purpose in the story well. Three the reason why I emphasize that Isha is male is not because I am implying that Mars and friends becomes a big love fest but because gender is a central part of the theme and a big part of why this manhwa stood out to me as being different from other stories Ive read like this. See every member of Mars trio has a different approach to femininity. Mars is a hotheaded woman who moves forward on her own. Jean is boycrazy and more traditionally feminine. Sion is consistently mistaken for being a pretty boy and laments her desire to be taken more seriously as a woman. In contrast Isha is a pretty boy one of many pretty boys in the series that has a complex about that kind of thing. Mars is different from other ESPers in that she has an ability unrelated to being an espershe can walk into other peoples dreams and has been doing so since she was a child. When she is first introduced to Isha Green she is shellshockedthe two of them had been visiting each other in their dreams for years prior to their first encounter. Theres only one problem. Isha doesnt recognize herbecause when Mars was meeting with Isha she was doing it in the form of her male counterpart Gai. Mars is a manmade ESPer made from the combination of various DNA. Assigned Kitty 101 at birth she is later given the name Mars by her adopted father a scientist who helped create her and later ran away with her due to her resemblance to his dead infant daughter. As a result of her DNA Mars turns into a cis man for a few days every month and has thus grown up alienated from the concept of gender and afraid to let her friends know of her true existence. Im not going to pretend that Normal Citys approach to gender is invigorating and exciting. It is tired and dullsomething that makes sense given the fact that this was written in the 90s. Western LGBT audiences might roll their eyes at some of the choices made in this manhwa from the casual jokes about gayness to the characters inability to accept that they might not be 100 heterosexual. It is period accurate for sure but what shocks in particular about this manhwa is the things that arent said. For a manhwa that has so many jokes like you guys are so close are you gays? I swear theres one of these every volume there is a surprising amount of emphasis placed on samesex relationships. Furthermore a lot of these samesex relationships are treated as being infinite and importantsomething even queer stories today have a problem with sometimes. As a gay woman I am often left to read stories where queer women especially lesbians who are disliked by heterosexual authors for being unable to be paired with a man are treated as the secondary relationship a partnership that pales in comparison to the dominant male/female pairing. In a way the author plays a perpetual game of gotcha with her audience. I wouldnt be so hesitant to call the story overt queerbait if it were not for the fact that the author emphasizes her samesex relationships as being as real as her heterosexual ones . I am not sure if the author intended that to be the case I have not read any of her other works and am not experienced with her as a writer but a large part of why this story ends up being one of the fondest explorations I have ever seen of scifi gay relationships is the large emphasis on the unimportance of gender except for when the author randomly decides to be really heteronormativeshe goes back and forth on that a LOT. After this point Im going to be really heavy on spoilers and they will be largely untagged so keep that in mind. Sion is Marss best friend. She is mistaken for being a man by several characters in the story and she emphasizes that she is a woman constantly to anyone listening. She and Mars have a teasing relationship where Sion plays man and Mars plays womanan inside joke for both of them seeing as neither particular fit their perceived gender role well note that Sion is not initially aware of Gai but is understanding when she finds outshowcasing the strength of the pairs relationship. Sion states constantly that she is not a lez as the translators translated it and like Isha with his constant barrage of Im a normal man that likes women they both achieve verbal heteronormativity. However none of this changes the fact that despite what the author eventually ends up writing Sion and Mars are the true undying love of the story. Look no further than the image used for the cover of this manga on this very sitethe only cover of this manhwa that doesnt feature Mars or Mars+Gai is a picture of Mars and Sion. They are the unresolved pair the destined duo the neverfulfilled tragedy that haunts all the characters alive by the end of the story. For a manhwa that treats character death as simply a casualty of the world they are in spoiler: a characters sibling dies in front of them and they dont even react the tone of the story shifts into angst whenever Sions unfortunate demise is brought up. The characters mourn herthe author mourns her. Characters more sympathetic than Sion are not given the narrative focus that she is given. This isnt to say that other relationships in the story dont exist or arent given primary focus. Isha and Mars are the main pair that are together by the end of the storyand yet none of this takes away from the way the author breathes life into Sion and Marss relationship even in the wake of both characters eventual demise. I am not giving descriptions of them justice but as I stated earlier I dont expect authors to treat relationships between women especially romantic ones with respect. It never happens. However the entirety of the story is spent with other characters emphasizing the bond Sion and Mars have. The way it is was clearly more than friends. The unresolved feelings between them that couldnt benot because Mars and Sion are both women but because Mars despises herself despises the fact that she is both a woman and a man despises the fear that Sion and Jean will leave her if she is true to herself. For a manhwa that makes so many jokes about characters being gay based off stereotypes no one jokes about the intensity of Sion and Marss relationship. It is recognized as being as true as every other relationship in the story even the ones between Mars and a man. Part of this is just that the author herself makes these jokes for comedy but is hypocritical about them in execution. Isha Green is a pretty boy that clearly likes girls like a normal man but finds his neverending love in Gai Marss male counterpart. The relationship between Isha and Gai is the other samesex pairing in the narrative that is given full attention. They are treated as consuming worthy and bondedbydestiny. The bond between Gai and Isha is explored in a way that is less sensitive to say than Sion and Marsbut it is still treated as being a pairing where both of them care for the other. I will say that the execution of Isha and Gais relationship leaves much to be desired. Ishas I like girls like a normal man comments aside the story makes it pretty clear by the middle half that Isha and Gais relationship is just supposed to be an extension of his eventual pairing with MarsI have a pretty big issue with this. I suppose this is the authors answer to the overhanging question of are Mars and Gai the same person? but it fails in execution to me because the bond between Mars and Isha by the end is still heavily reliant on Ishas feelings for Gai and viceversa this point is important to me especially when I recall how Mars had an identity crisis one of the middle volumes over recognizing that Gai had feelings for Isha that she simply did notcalling into question her identity as both Mars AND Gai. Unfortunately the story decides that Mars and Gai are essentially the same person and Isha is a normal heterosexual boy that liked a girl that he just saw as being a boy for most of his life. Cool. I nitpick but Mars and Gai are very interesting as characters. Aside from my complaints about the way their relationship with Isha is handled their existence as a pair provides for a lot of reflection for the reader. Similar stories that handle this kind of dynamic like Ranma emphasize that the male and female counterpart are the same person. Although Mars identifies as a woman both through presentation and through verbal longing she is not sure of who she is as a man. She is separated from her womanhood in a way that Sion her masculine friend is not. She wonders if she can be a human being at all because she is both a man and a woman. I found this to be an interesting dilemma on her parther worry that a lack of clear gender and I guess being manmade makes her inhuman. This visually contrasts well with the fact that the cast is made up with so many characters who are mistaken for being a sex that they are not. As someone who also struggles with gender identity Mars is very relatable and I can sympathize with her confusion. The part of her that is Gai sees the world differently that than the part of her that is Mars although she laments the way women treat her when she is Gaione of the best parts of being a woman is interacting with other women after all. Her struggle and resulting existential chaos form a huge part of the narratives lesson by the end of the storywhat does it mean to be human? What makes Isha Green more human than Mars Haven for being born naturally? Can someone who is born naturally be human truly? Is someone who is not human deserving of love? The story actually attempts to answer this question with each of Marss love interestsher defining partner Sion the light of her life Isha and her biological partner Venus. Isha and Sion set Mars apart as being human. In the process of loving them Mars becomes someone who is not Kitty 101 someone who is not just the lab experiment that Dr. Troll created. Isha less so due to his DNA being a part of Kitty 101 the story emphasizes that destiny means nothing to some characters but everything to others. Venus is the narratives symbolic perfect manan amusing twist seeing as he is named after the female deity of beauty while Mars his destined partner is named after the male deity of war. In a way their dynamic is interesting because we are used to seeing it with the genders switched. Venus lies back in the shadows never interfering while laying his claim on Mars from afar while Mars jumps into battle on her own and picks imperfect people over Venus in the end. Venuss partnership with Mars would eventually imply that Mars is not human. That her breeding with Venus like she is supposed to means that she has fulfilled the role she is created for and was never a human being to begin with. She existed as a tool for Dr. Troll to use from the beginning. Mars fights this though at the climax of the story. She sends Dr. Troll her past memories by projecting her dreamsshe shows him the people she has loved as Mars Sion and Jean and the people she has loved as Gai Isha. These experiences she has had on her own in absence of his interference proves that she is sincerely a human being. Dr. Troll thereby exists as a symbolic god the one who made Venus and Mars and the one who asked them to play the roles they were given. Make no mistake the narrative asks you to see Mars as being a woman but never downgrades her talents or masculine sense of style ex: her ruthless demeanor and intimidating presence is something normally allotted to bounty hunterstyle characters in scifi stories like these. Sion is masculine but is seen as being a woman as well as being the only character worth mourning by the entire cast. The manhwa initially treats Ishas affection for Gai as being humorous but they are eventually given fullcenter and given the same romantic context as Venus/Mars and Isha/Mars. In doing so the manhwa presents deviance from gender roles as being correct and necessary in order to beat the big bada cruel misogynist scientist who adores gender roles while fixating on eugenics. The story ends with a tearjerking twist one that makes sense if youve read the entire story and understood what vice about each character lead to the ending. Although the story primarily focuses on Marss and Ishas as well as Venuss and Jeans struggles with who they are the author asks the audience to look at themselves as well. What makes a bond love and what makes a bond dependence? Is it not okay to be selfish and selfcentered if it means no one else gets hurt? Most importantly the author asks if she was right to end the story the way she did. Is Mars Haven a human being? What would it mean if she were not?