James Nicoll Reviews

2020’s Kowloon Generic Romance, Volume One is the first tankōbon for Jun Mayuzuki’s science fiction manga series, Kūron Jenerikku Romansu in the original Japanese. Kowloon Generic Romance has been serialized in Shueisha’s seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump since November 2019. Amanda Haley’s English translation was published in 2022.

Kowloon Walled City is¹ home to 35,000 people on just 2.6 hectares². That’s over a million people per square kilometer. One thing is sure: real estate firms will never lack for clients.

Good news for the employees of the Wong Loi Realty Company!

Diligent Reiko Kujirai works beside brash Hajime Kudou, a boisterous young man who thinks nothing of shouldering aside Kujirai while clocking in at the last possible moment. Opposites in many ways, the pair should be like oil and water. Inexplicably, they spend their off-hours socializing.

While Kujirai would never think of leaving Kowloon Walled City — those who tired of Kowloon Walled City are tired of life — she does enjoy seeking out novelty. To her frustration, new restaurants usually vanish soon after opening. Kudou’s explanation: that Kowloon Walled City is the city of nostalgia, so of course new ventures cannot prevail.

Work keeps Kujirai busy. The properties Wong Loi Realty Company oversees have their own management companies, but few of them seem interested in fulfilling their duties. Thus, it falls to the Wong Loi employees to spruce up dilapidated apartments and to track down the sources of annoying noises.

Alas, all this does not keep Kujirai too busy to fall for the clearly inappropriate Kudou. As Kudou does not appear to reciprocate, Kujirai’s infatuation seems doomed.

Why then did a napping Kudou kiss Kujirai when she tried to wake him? And how is it the photo of Kudou and his fiancée features a woman who could be Kujirai’s twin sister?

~oOo~

Kowloon Walled City has an odd place in Western SF, which is to say it has no place at all of which I am aware. How odd. Kowloon Walled City was an anarchic triumph, successful enough to thrive for decades until China and Britain cooperated to level the place. Surely, it should be a model referenced by libertarians around the world, not to mention providing valuable insight for space colony fans curious about how many people can fit into a small volume.

And yet, it is not.

The manga sets the scene nicely early on, by pulling out from a close-up on Kujirai to provide the context in which she lives.

I understand that might seem nightmarish to some. The characters in the manga seem happy enough… at least in volume one. Their struggles are in the top three tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, not challenges like food and shelter, or rampaging ICE agents.

While the synopsis may sound like a commonplace — one could even say ​“generic” — office romance between ill-suited partners, the manga makes it clear this is not quite the Kowloon Walled City we knew. For one thing, there is a large, levitating structure floating above Kowloon Walled City. For another, there’s some odd business in the café in which Kujirai is seated towards Volume One’s end.

Not to mention… but that will have to wait until later volumes.

In any case, this is science fiction, slow burn SF intriguing enough that I will be sure to track down later volumes.

Kowloon Generic Romance, Volume One is available here (Yen Press), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: Well, was. Kowloon Walled City was destroyed by the British in the early 1990s.

2: For metric-averse Americans reading: that is the area of a square whose edges are as long as 270 giraffes stood one on top of the other, if giraffes were as tall as smallish Magellanic Penguins.

USA delenda est.