Immortal Rain by Kaori Ozaki
“His only possessions are the sky, the earth and a broken-down violin.
Even so … he only loved someone once in his lifetime.”
The Timeline : sometime in June, 2012
Ah Immortal Rain. *sighs*
Oh where do I even start with this one? There are so many things to talk about and just as many that I've forgotten or will not mention but don't hold that against the story. My memory alone is to blame here.
This summer, I found myself reading mangas. It’s something I used to spend hours doing some five years ago but stopped for no real reason. It’s with mangas that my English got better and I feel no shame in saying that I love reading mangas and manhwas. There are a lot of great stories and amazing drawings and you can as easily get lost in them as you may with regular novels. I’d even go as far as state that some mangas are far better than some books I’ve read over the years, with superb writing to match.
"Immortal Rain" is one of those all-time favorite gems you’ll find in the mangas world. I remember that I picked it up one morning after pulling yet another all-nighter reading something else. Something that I don’t really remember but it doesn’t really matter. At first I was really not that excited about it, it was really different from all the shoujo I had been devouring for weeks. Even the drawing was very different. But for some reason, I kept on reading. And that’s got to be one of the best decisions of my life as a bookworm.
You have to understand that I’ve read my fair share of shoujo and I’ve had some all-time favorites (namely “Fushigi Yuugi” and “Ayashi no Ceres” by Yuu Watase) brand themselves onto my memory with the fierce believe that no other manga will ever reach that level of perfection. I was so damn sure that I’ll never love another story as much, never experience as many emotions for the characters; never feel that deep sense of loss when it was over. And oh boy I was wrong; I was so, so wrong. And it took all it took for me to realize that was one early morning, looking for something to read, and picking a title half-heartedly, just because it had the word “Rain” in it.
I’ve never been more grateful for my deep love of the rain.
But I’m starting to ramble here. Let’s get to the story.
As it’s been a while since I’ve read it, I might forget to mention some things that if I had had the sense to write this after reading it would be in this review. But I’m going to try my best to give as many details as possible.
“Immortal Rain” starts off with the main female character, a 14 years old grim reaper named Machika. She is a bounty hunter in a dystopia world who is looking for the ultimate price: the immortal Methuselah. Although the money would do her some good, the real reason why she is hell bent on killing the man is a promise she made to her late grandfather. Her grandfather was a grim reaper too, a very good one at that, but never succeeded in capturing Methuselah and Machika wants to that for him, for the man who took care of her since birth.
And she almost succeeds in that, because as we start reading, she had caught up with the man and she is ready to end him.
But then, things never go as we plan them and other bounty hunters are there to mess it all up. Machika is then forced to get to Methuselah after he had been caught and chained in fortress. When they meet again, she is surprised to see that he could have left his prison at any given moment it he’d chosen to. And this is only the beginning of a long list of things Machika will come to learn about Methuselah whose name is in fact, Rain.
After escaping and almost dying several times in the process (at least for Machika, since Rain is immortal), Rain leaves without a word and a very pissed off and determined Machika decide to follow him only to find out that he had been caught again. Only this time, he is part of a mysterious auction. After several events, including one where she meets Ayla, a girl part of a small group of people who have been shunned from their clan because they were accused of having killed their king, Machika finds away into the auction and to Rain. Having no money she offers to fight to obtain him and ends up facing Sharem, the woman who Ayla is certain is the real murderer of the king she loved and the head of a mysterious organization that will, later in the mangas, become a fucking huge problem.
Again, things get messed up but in the end Machika is reunited with Rain with whom she’s going to start a journey. Since she doesn’t appear to be willing to leave him alone, Rain doesn’t really have much choice in the matter anymore.
We learn that Rain is immortal for a reason. There is a cross over his heart and on this cross is etched a date. It’s the date on which Rain is supposed to meet the man who made him immortal. A man he once considered as a dear friend, back when he was still mortal—Yuca Collabel. In between chapters of the actual story, we get flashbacks of what happened back then. When Rain was in his early twenties, he lived in a church and was set on priesthood. In the church lived a girl named Freya whom he was in love with. But much to Rain’s sadness, Freya was head over heels for Yuca, another soon-to-be priest. The church also served as an orphanage during the time of a war. There were several children living with them and the nun in charge of the whole thing.
But beneath the façade of false caring and friendship, Yuca isn’t who he appears to be and soon, as the war reaches its climax, the truth about his darkness is revealed in the most gruesome way. Yuca is working as a researcher for the military, developing ”angels”. What is this “angel” thing you may wonder? Well, an “angel” is basically a human being that is given “angel” powers. The problem is that the human body can’t stand the cellular change and they die a horrible death looking nothing like angels and everything like bats from the deepest pits of hell. The military doesn’t care about human lives and Yuca is right there with them so when they run out of war prisoners to test the damn thing on, Yuca, ever so helpful, provide them with every one of the people he’d spend years pretending to care for, to love, to consider as friends and family.
I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to spoil things but at the end of that horrible ordeal, Rain wakes up to find a smiling Yuca patiently waiting for him. Yuca then proceeds on explaining that now, Rain is immortal and that the cross, linked to his heart, is what will keep him immortal until the date etched on the cross. The day where Yuca will come back for him—the day he’ll be reborn.
And that’s what Rain has been waiting for, for centuries. The day he’ll finally meet Yuca again, and ask him: “Why”. Because, as you’ll learn pretty fast, Rain is the most beautiful person you’ll ever encounter in your reading life. And the amazing thing is, it doesn’t even get on your nerves that he so pure hearted and forgiving; on the contrary, it’ll make you love him even more, cherish him even more. That’s what happened to me anyway and I’m really not the kind of reader or person that enjoys a pure, 100% nice character. They usually irk me and piss me off, but not Rain. Oh not Rain. I pretty much lost count over the chapters and volumes of the times I fell in love with Rain over and over and over again. His love for humanity, his clumsiness, his pain over everything that happened in the past, his willingness to forgive, his protectiveness toward Machika and then his feelings for her over the chapters and so much more, oh so much more—everything about Rain makes him a formidable character, an unforgettable character.
In the course those wonderful 11 volumes, there’s a lot of things happening. The journey Rain and Machika embark upon leads them to cross path again with Sharem and her minions, kids she adopted over the years and who are fiercely loyal to her. Sharem who has a past of her own, a pain of her own that we learn about later and that explains a lot of things about who she is and why she has become the cold hearted bitch she comes across as. I hated Sharem but cried for her nonetheless because this is one the beautiful things in “Immortal Rain”—you will cry for characters that at first, you harbored a deep loathing for (well, maybe except for her husband).
Sharem is working on unearthing the Angels that have been asleep for centuries in old military secret labs. Her organization (which is her husband’s as well) is determined to recreate the Angels and sell them as weapons of mass destruction to the highest bidder world-wide. Of course, this is a terrible idea and the horrors that will come from that will have a major impact on the end of the mangas in the form of a fucking huge monster set free by a mad man/scientist who was working on the project.
A mad man who is a problem on his own when he loses his freaking mind and goes after Machika and Ys in a chapter that left me breathless and half crazed from the insane amount of suspense in it.
But who on earth is Ys, you may ask? You’ve never mentioned an Ys before! I know, I know. Ys, dear person who is reading this, is the reincarnation of Yuca who is indeed born the day Yuca had foreseen for his rebirth. He looks exactly like Yuca and has Yuca’s memories. And yes, he knows who Rain is.
When Ys, born from an affair between Sharem’s husband and her sister, meets Rain again, he asks him to come with him, he is freaking happy to see him again, he calls him friend, he is so fucking insane in everything he is saying to him that I was wondering what the fuck was going on. But when Rain says no, the he isn’t willing to join him to witness the end of the world, Ys asks his new mommy, Sharem, to take him anyway. And my GOD that scene killed me. It killed me because Machika is suddenly there and Rain is asking her to go and she doesn’t want to leave him because she loves him, and he loves her too but she has to go because he doesn’t want her to save him anymore, he wants her to save herself and he closes the vault and she is left there, crying and I’m crying and the whole thing was too much—too much but so fucking beautiful.
And after that scene, with my heart breaking, we’re left only with Machika and her determination to find Rain again. Because there is just no way she is going to give up and I adored her for that. I don’t remember if a year go by or months but she has changed. You feel it even in the way her facial expressions are drawn at that point of the story, she feels stronger, older, wiser and Rain is the only thing that matters. And after a long search, she finds him again through Ayla in a big city that can only be described as a dystopia version of Tokyo.
Rain is held captive by Ys in a room where Disney-land has come to die. He is in a sort of lethargy but that doesn’t seem to faze Ys who keeps coming to “play” with him and talk about apocalypse and the end of the world like it’s going to be super extra fun. Seeing Rain like that, like some kind of big doll, just sitting on a chair, eyes empty, unresponsive after everything you’ve read and seen…that was heartbreaking.
But then, of course, Machika finds a way to him and there’s a surprising turn of events where Eury, one of Sharem’s minions with the personality of a playboy and the asshole attitude to match, helps Rain escape because he finally realizes that the whole Angels thing is just too crazy to be a part of anymore.
Despite my little description of Eury, I loved the guy. He was funny and damaged in his own way. I loved his siblings, I felt the pain in his past and I was over the moon when finally, finally he gets his own happiness with Ayla. He was amazing in the final volume and the final chapters.
Ah the final volume. The final volume fucking destroyed me. I was a mess the whole time, reading and crying and reading and crying and then just bawling my eyes out and having to stop because I couldn’t see through the tears anymore. I cried like the world was ending, and in a way, it was. I cried for what felt like hours and my heart was breaking in a million pieces and oh my god it was too much. I was overwhelmed by everything that was happening in those final scenes. I was grieving, literally. I cried for Sharem, I cried for Eury, I cried for Machika, I cried for Rain and oh my god how I cried for Yuca. Oh Yuca, Yuca, Yuca!
I don’t remember ever crying so hard and so much for a character, let alone for a character that I’ve spent most of the volumes hating with a burning passion. I mean, you’ll have to read to really get it but Yuca was just so much more than what we learn at first. Those last moments in the volume with him and Rain on that deserted beach and then Rain leaving and oh my god, I feel like crying even now, months later just remembering the whole thing. My heart hurts even now because it was that powerful, that tragic, it was that fucking amazing. Yuca's moment with Machika when she steps into that dimension didn’t help things either, the conversation they have and what he tells her and God I can’t even.
Ok, I need a deep breath here.
Yuca is at the essence of everything and that makes even more sense when you know the real story behind who he is and the particularity of his memory—the reason why he turned Rain into Methuselah.
“Immortal Rain” exists because of Yuca and it makes him even more unforgettable. My hatred for him turned into this blazing love at the end. And that’s just so rare. I’ve never read a book where that happened to me and it makes Koari Ozaki one hell of a storyteller. She is a goddess at character development and I bow deeply to her genius and her talent. She gave me a story I’ll never forget and characters I love more deeply than I’ve ever loved some actual real people that I’ve met in real life.
So you, whoever you are and who’ve had the courage to read this until the end--if you love heartwarming romance, if you love heart wrenching tragedies, beautiful stories with amazing characters and mindblowing endings or if you simply love to read; there’s an epic adventure waiting for you—Immortal Rain.
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