Hanshin: Half-God

harvestmoon07 Jun 20, 2016

10

This was a great one shot about conjoined twins and their everyday struggles. While one sister is ugly but very intelligent, the other sister is beautiful and mentally challenged. The ugly sister is treated terribly because of her looks while the pretty sister is praised and called an angel because of her innocence of the world, which causes her to hate her sister. After a life changing surgery the ugly sister is given the chance she has always longed for, a chance to get away from her sister she has to constantly care for and be her own person. But all this comes at the at the cost of her sister's life, which she doesn't think will affect her. In the end, even though the girl grows up to be beautiful and have all of the things she has wished for she realizes just how much her sister meant and how much she misses her. 

tamirsalem Dec 7, 2010

8

I found this manga here in Anime Planet in the random manga section, and it surprises me no one ever wrote a review for such a great manga. Hanshin is about Yucy and Yudy, conjoined sisters. Yucy is gorgeous but is incapable of walking, eating and doing other basic activities by herself. Yudy is ugly, but incredibly intelligent. Though the situation of the twins is naturally impossible, dismissing the manga for this inacuraccy is quite foolish. With less than 30 pages, the story is incredibly deep and revolves around Yudy, which, due to her ugliness, is ignored by everyone and has to help her sister do everything. Yudy gets unhappier by the day, and sees Yucy as a demon which steals her nutrients, wishing to kill her. Sometime later, some doctors realize that Yudy's organs are being forced to work too hard in order to support Yucy, and that if they do not perform a risky surgery to separate the twins, Yudy will die from heart failure and Yucy will die of lack of nutrients, given to her by Yudy. Yudy immediately sees the surgery as a chance of salvation and freedom and accepts doing it. As predicted, Yudy survives and visits a dying Yucy, which was now as ugly as her. Yudy eventually becomes as pretty as her now deceased sister, but lives on wondering if the one who died wasn't actually her, or half of her. The artwork of the manga is very good and conveys Yudy's feelings with great ease. Though incredibly short, this oneshot is very good and should be read.

nathandouglasdavis Jan 31, 2021

8

I started reading and noticed the art wasn't very appealing, but I was captivated nonetheless. It's an interesting concept--of conjoined twins where one of them is essentially a parasite--narrated through internal monologues of the intelligent but ugly twin. External beauty and the shallowness of society is obviously a theme, with people treating the twins differently purely based on their appearances. I'm not sure how I feel about the identity dissociation at the end--it felt a bit too...cleancut, or something. But it was a good story, a good use of fifteen pages.