[Thanks to Netgalley and Kodansha for a copy of this manga in exchange for an unbiased review.]

Upon graduating university, Yukinojo enters an arranged marriage with Asahi, whose family runs an apple farm in Aomori. Not quite fitting in, Yukinojo struggles to adjust and then he curses his wife with forbidden fruit. As one does.

This manga leads off with a very underwhelmingly slow first section, where Yukinojo wants to leave his adopted home because [no reason given] and so he gets married. And moves. And he gets to know his bride and the family, or at least tries - only Yukinojo has any amount of development.

Yukinojo works hard, starts to connect with people, learns the ways of apple farming, the usual. It’s incredibly pedestrian and accurately portrays both the demands of farming and the laid-back, gossipy nature of village life.

It looks like this is about to be a spirited discourse on the fish out of water story, but it then takes a turn as Yukinojo violates local custom that he had absolutely zero warning against and finds himself pitted against a Shinto god for his wife’s hand.

That part is more interesting, obviously, as the villagers are a suspicious and distrustful lot, as it turns out, and the curse slowly, but insidiously, starts to change Asahi’s body. It’s a unique take on body horror, really, and I quite liked it. Poor Yukinojo is at fault, but he’s also blameless, and just getting to know Asahi.

So, you have something that sounds decent enough, if not for the decision of the translator to make all the villagers Scottish. This is such a bad idea that I think this is the only manga I’ve seen where the translation notes should be at the very front.

The rationale makes sense, it does, but the rationale does not make up for the cognitive dissonance of having a small Japanese village full of Scots. For me, it was so staggeringly off-putting that I could hardly focus on anything else.

I’m not suggesting there was a better way to do this - my knowledge of Japanese dialect begins and ends at the attempts of translators to handle people from Osaka. However, this is a perfectly okay, if somewhat plodding, story otherwise that I couldn’t connect with. I’ve seen books that were brought down by bad translations before, but this might be the first where a specific choice felt so detrimental to what was on offer.

Again, this is all me. I think your own perspective is very key to enjoying this and it will definitely be for some people. For some, plodding is just slowly paced and the accents won’t be noticed and I think the story rewards those readers. I envy them.

2 stars - if you can handle the dialogue, nudge it higher. I feel for the translator, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea with trying to portray a very regional dialect, I really do. But I could not in my wildest dreams think of handling another volume of this.

It's a bit of an odd manga to describe but very lovely. Great introduction with a bit of mystery to lay out the groundwork. Liked the folklore and magical realism that it had. Like the build up that they have.

Abandoned as a baby, Yukinojo can't help but feel adrift in life, so when an heiress to an Aomori apple farm proposes to him, he takes up her offer.

However, after he feeds his newlywed wife an apple from a mysterious tree, she becomes irrevocably changed, and the two of them are left trying to deal with the consequences.

Apple Children of Aeon, Vol. 1 by Ai Tanaka is a surreal and contemplative slice-of-life manga that’s steeped in Shintoism and magical realism.

I’ve got to say, this manga has such a wonderful sense of place, transporting readers to the idyllic Aomori countryside. I think it’s precisely because the setting and characters feel so grounded that the subtle fantastical elements woven into the story feel all the more believable.

On top of that, the art style feels like you’re opening up an old illustrated folktale. It’s simple yet charming and atmospheric. Honestly, the artwork and covers are so gorgeous that I wish that Kodansha will eventually come out with a print release.

Lastly, I love how introspective this manga is. Yukinojo is a poetic narrator who meditates on themes of life and death and identity through dream sequences. He lays bare his doubts and fears to the reader, making for an earnest and heartfelt read.

Overall, Apple Children of Aeon is a wistful and poignant beautiful gem of a manga that’ll endear fans of Go with the Clouds, North by Northwest and Spice and Wolf.

I found myself drawn into the storyline as it is such a unique and beautiful premise. Definitely interested in how this story continues!

Thank you Kodansha and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Apple Children of Aeon, Volume 1 is a story that follows Yukinojo, a young, educated man who marries into a family of apple farmers in rural Japan. In this first volume, we don't really see much development between Yukinojo, his wife, and his new family. The plot moves very quickly, so as a reader, it felt like I had very little time to get to know the characters and their motivations.

Aside from the quick pacing, one of my biggest gripes with this manga was the dialogue. There's a stark difference between Yukinojo's and his new family's speech. And while I understand where the translator is coming from in portraying a rural accent, I feel like the dialogue for the apple farmers was a bit distracting and sometimes hard to understand.

Here's an example of Yukinojo's wife's dialogue: "Da says 'e windnae hae gotten an education were it no fer this tree an' what it gave the family." Pretty much all the townsfolk of the rural village speaks like this, while Yukinojo's dialoge is written to be polished and grammatically correct. I think there are better ways to portray this difference in speech.

Overall, Apple Children of Aeon had potential, but I the pacing was too fast and the dialogue was too distracting for to find the story worth reading.

*I received a free copy of this manga from NetGalley*

Thank you Netgalley and Kodansha Comics for the opportunity to read and review this.

I found this hauntingly beautiful to read. Written in a country dialect, which was hard to understand, this story follows a young graduate who marries a girl, whose family runs an apple orchard. When she falls ill, he picks an apple from a mysterious tree, and strange things start to happen...

I really look forward to the next volume!

What a pleasant surprise! I went into this knowing almost nothing about it, and it went in a direction that I did not expect. The artstyle is simple but unique, and the mysteries and folklore throughout were really interesting. The only slight complaint would be some of the dialogue, as most of the characters speak in a countryside dialect. I don't mind this, however I definitely stumbled in reading some lines as they were a bit difficult to interpret at times. However, I thoroughly love the direction the story seems to be going in based off of the ending, and I will definitely be picking up the next volume in this series!

Absolutely gorgeous manga with contemplative themes. I hope more licenses such as this are forthcoming, and that this is coming to print eventually.

This book was a little difficult for me to get into, as I found chapter 1 to be a little boring. As I dived into chapters 2 and 3, the plot really begins to get set up and my interest grew. I found the characters to be a little flat and not show much in the way of development, or even care at all about their relationships and marriage. It felt like a very surreal reading experience, but the mystery might call me back to check out volume 2 when it's released.

Basically it’s about a young graduate who marrys a girl and when she gets sick, he goes to an apple tree where strange things happens around him such his wife shrinking to a child, her hair growing and that she is marrying someone else. It’s pretty strange manga I’ve read but it shows Japan back in the day so the historical sense is interesting! Pretty good manga I’ve read yes yes!

Thanks Netgalley and publisher for the first volume!