Review:
This is a collection of three stories. I'll cover each one separately.
"Last and First Idol"
This is the story of Mika Furutsuki, a girl who loved idols ever since she was six months old and only idols could calm her crying. Her dream of becoming an idol herself eventually leads her to attend a high school known for having produced one of the top new idols. At that school, she eventually catches the attention of Maori Niizono, a girl who doesn't care much about becoming an idol herself but who, for some reason, is determined to help Mika achieve her dreams.
Unfortunately, Mika's best efforts aren't enough. Her talent agency goes bankrupt, and both her sister and Maori Niizono confront her in the aftermath. Although Maori continues to be determined to help her, this only makes Mika feel worse. Feeling as though she's lost everything worth living for, Mika kills herself. This, as is turns out, is just the beginning of her story.
I had no idea what I was getting into with this story. Even when I thought I'd found my footing ("ok, so this is a screwed up post-apocalyptic twisted yuri/idol adventure"), the story shifted and became larger and larger scale, until it encompassed the creation of the universe and the origins of consciousness.
It got a bit too weird and large-scale for me, although I appreciated that I had literally no idea where any of it was going to go. Also, the way idol rules, goals, and career development were bent and twisted to fit the post-apocalyptic situation was darkly (horrifyingly?) amusing. Without spoiling too much, the cover art would have been a little more accurate if the idol, who assume is supposed to be Mika, were spattered in blood and gore.
"Evolution Girls"
Youko Sasajima is a twenty-something young woman who gets sucked into a free-to-play game called Evo Gals, in which ancient extinct species depicted as cute girls battle against each other. Unfortunately, although the game is technically free, the only way to truly progress and make it onto the leader boards is to use the gacha system to get better girls, clothing with better or more appropriate stats, and more. Before she realizes it, Youko is spending everything she has on the game. She's barely eating, and she hasn't gone to work in a week. During a trip to a convenience store for some food, Youko is inevitably hit by a truck...and reborn as an amoeba into something very much like the world of Evo Gals.
This was my favorite story in the book - it reminded me, somewhat, of Okina Baba's So I'm a Spider, So What? Maybe I'm just starved for "reborn into a nonhuman body" isekai. Anyway, Youko's new life becomes a constant quest for points, which can most easily be earned by killing and eating other Girls (which gets pretty horrifying when you think about it), and new gacha.
Of the three stories, this one was probably the least weird and experimental, at least until the last couple chapters, when it, like the others, ballooned to encompass all of time and space. I got to the point where I wished Kusano would stop doing that.
"Dark Seiyuu"
In the world of this story, seiyuu are no longer just voice actors - they are people with mutations and genetic alterations that have given them laryngeal sacs with incredible power. In the story's present, seiyuu are kept under tight control and used to power spaceships. Akane is secretly determined to become the ultimate seiyuu, break free of the constraints put on her people, and change the world. When confronted with the limits of her abilities, Akane overcomes them by killing other seiyuu and transplanting their laryngeal sacs onto her own body. The one laryngeal sac that Akane wants most belongs to a terrorist known as Dark Seiyuu.
Did Randall Munroe's What If? books ever cover what would happen if Earth's gravity suddenly disappeared? Anyway, so does this story, but this apocalyptic event is only of minor interest to Akane, who will do absolutely whatever it takes to find and defeat the Dark Seiyuu. Including murder (of course), cannibalism, the enslavement of a space whale, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting.
This story was utterly bonkers and, to me, seemed like the most comedic one in this anthology, despite the complete destruction of Earth. Kusano also embraced the yuri elements a little more...although I very much expected Akane to eventually turn her girlfriend, Sachii, into an emergency food source at some point.
The collection ends with a chapter written by Satoshi Maejima, a light novel/sci-fi journalist. From the sounds of things, although Kusano received an award for the first story in this collection, the judges where extremely divided about it, some of them utterly hating the work. Honestly, I was kind of put off myself when I heard more of the details. "Last and First Idol" was originally written (and submitted to the contest as) a Love Live anime fanfic. That said, from what little I know of Love Live, Kusano's story was an extremely...unique take.
Overall, this was an interesting and unusual collection. That said, Gengen Kusano seemed somewhat fixated on endings that were as large scale as possible. I could deal with it in these stories, but it would have been utterly exhausting in a longer work.
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