Rojika to Rakkasei is a post-apocalyptic seinen manga by Kinome which started in 2017 and ran for twenty-five chapters in Kurage Bunch, the same magazine that published the thematically-similar sister series Girls' Last Tour. If the description didn't tip you off, it's essentially a moe Slice of Life take on Adventure Time, and it offers a gentle, relaxed look at the end of the human race and the sunny days of its last member ... punctuated by the occasional bit of extremely Black Comedy or morbid brutality.
Rojika to Rokkasei contains examples of:
- After the End: The ruins of human civilization are poking up from underneath the pastoral setting. Later chapters reveal it was destroyed by "giants", walking biochemical weapons created by humanity to fight their wars.
- Ambiguous Ending: The series ends with the quirky townspeople having a dance party and Shi-san finding inner peace. However, the implication there was another escape pod turned out to be a fake-out, and despite all the teases more of humanity might still be alive, we don't get a definitive answer one way or the other.
- Ambiguous Gender: In the afterword in volume 3, the author Kinome states that Rakkasei's design has a mix of boyish and girlish traits, and that they never really decided on a specific gender but the character in question is "most likely" a girl. Despite that, Rakkasei is described throughout the series with female pronouns, so either Kinome-san is lying or the scanlators didn't get the hint.
- The Ark: A handful of human survivors fled to space aboard the Noah, but it was seemingly taken out by an asteroid, leaving the infant Rakka as the only survivor.
- Beef Gate: When Rakka and Shii-chan venture forth to try and get a rare insect for Rojika's birthday, they find a piglike thing blocking the narrow mountain path, and it won't budge until Rakka figures out a way to defeat it.
- Beneath the Mask: The late Cain is worshipped by the village for his skill with magic. However, his own posthumous POV chapter reveals he was a vain psychopath who considered lesser people "sacrifices" that would allow him to achieve greatness.
- Birthday Episode: Chapter 4 is about Rakka's attempt to decide on a gift for Rojika's birthday.
- Born of Magic: Rakkasei, an enormous peanut grown by Isaac-kun, gifted to Rakka and Rojika, and then accidentally imbued with a soul by Abel.
- Bully Magnet: Abel, who lives in his deceased brother Cain's shadow, seems to attract hostility due to his lack of magical talent.
- Cain and Abel: The series has two brothers with those exact names, although in a twist Abel is jealous of Cain for being a better sorcerer. Later flipped on its head when we discover Cain tried to murder Abel for having an innate ability to effect living things with his magic, which backfired spectacularly when Abel magically blew his brother's head off his shoulders in self-defense.
- Call-Back: In the penultimate chapter, Rakka finally finds a gramophone so she can listen to the vinyl record she found in the very first chapter.
- Cartoon Creature: Every character besides Rokka is some kind of furry being, but they all act like humans and their species, if any, is not given to the reader at the outset of the story.
- Chain of Deals: Chapter 15 involves Rakka trading items with the people she meets in her quest to find raspberries.
- Cheerful Child: Rakka is a bright and optimistic child with an artistic streak, and she seems to be taking the twilight of her whole race in stride.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Rakka reads Rojika's diary in chapter 4, one entry recaps the time they found a vinyl record in chapter 1.
- When Abel says some types of magic can imbue inanimate things with souls, Rojika thinks back to the peanut-child he and Rakka raised in the previous chapter.
- Cozy Catastrophe: It's the end of the world as we know it, and Rakka feels fine. She acts like a normal, happy little girl, surrounded by her friendly nonhuman companions, while the plants slowly reclaim the ruins of her civilization.
- Crapsaccharine World: On the surface, the world looks like a sunny, happy place. But the ruins of human civilization, like rusted car bodies and leaning telephone poles, dot the quaint Ghibli Hills.
- Creepy Good: A number of characters have strange or unsettling appearances, but are otherwise decent.
- Cowbell is a farmer with a vase for a head who lords over a farm with somewhat unsettling cows. But he helps the duo get milk and gives them a present after one of his cows follows them around all day. Of course, the gift is steak, presumably made from the cow that they had become friends with, but that is what a farmer does.
- Shii-san makes has a somewhat unsettling introduction, seemingly having a permanent Slasher Smile, a rather intense stare, and a Nonstandard Character Design even by the strange standards of the series, along with a name that literally sounds like "death" (see Meaningful Name below). Furthermore, his true Establishing Character Moment is killing a giant by morphing into some kind of Humanoid Abomination. Yet over the course of the series he turns out to be one of the duo's staunchest allies, having helped Rojika raise Rakkasei and solving a lot of problems for the locals. We eventually find out he was a Living Weapon created to restore the world by killing giants until the earth was habitable again, making him the closest thing the series has to a Big Good.
- Miss Grace is a strange spider-like creature who is mostly only seen screaming while chasing small creatures. Despite this, we eventually learn she used to be a beautiful and intelligent mother who traded her body and her heart to heal her daughter's seemingly uncurable ailment. Even in her current form it's shown there's enough of her original personality left that she's still a Friend to All Children and even helps Rojika catch a moment of respite from parenting duties by holding baby Rakkassei for a few minutes.
- Dogged Nice Guy: The snake-dude from chapter 16 climbs a mountain just to get the flower he's been told his crush Elmi-san wants. When she turns him down, he suspects she has been replaced by an imposter and kills her thinking he can save the real one.
- Dream Within a Dream: Chapter 15. The chapter begins with Rakka waking up from a nightmare and hankering for some pancakes with raspberries. It ends with her falling off a cliff, and then waking up from a nightmare with a hankering for pancakes with raspberries.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Rakka's neighbor Massu-san says that her husband, who is only kept alive by medical equipment, can only communicate via "strange symbols" (Morse code), she claims that she thinks he's enjoying the food she feeds him through his feeding tube. If you translate it, he's actually begging to be killed.
- The Ghost: Massu-san talks about her husband often, but Rakka and Rojika get a shock when they realize they've never actually seen him. They ask around, and learn nobody else has either. When they come right out and ask, they discover he's been on life support since his race only lives for twenty years, and he's much older than that.
- Go Out with a Smile: Bakubaku repays Rakka's kindness by draining the poison from her body and taking it into himself. When his corpse is discovered by their neighbor, she thinks he's sleeping and decides not to disturb his peaceful smile.
- Humanity's Wake: Mankind is seemingly dead and gone, but the creatures who've taken over the world seem to regard them and their sole surviving child with curiosity.
- Imagine Spot: When Rakka and Rojika try and imagine what a "beautiful person" from the plant tribe looks like, Rakka pictures a fey elf, while Rojika pictures a disco ball with legs.
- In-Series Nickname: Rakkasei is usually called Rakka, which means "fallen".
- Interspecies Adoption: Rakka, a human girl, is raised by ... whatever the hell Rojika is supposed to be.
- The Insomniac: Rojika likes to laze around not doing anything, but if he does then he lies awake in bed having an existential crisis about the fact that he wasted the day.
- Ironic Echo: At the beginning of the late Cain's POV chapter, he expresses that lesser people are sacrifices to allow the greater ones to achieve their excellence. Those same words are repeated at the end, when he tries to murder Abel as a toddler because of his untapped magical potential, and Abel effortlessly decapitates him wih magic.
- Kabedon: Rakka floats this as a plan to get Elmi-san to fall in love with her shy admirer.
- Last of His Kind: Rakka is seemingly the only human being left, but since she's just a child she doesn't seem to know that much about her origins.
- Lost in Translation: Maybe? The English scanlations refer to Rakkasei with female pronouns. But at the end of the series, Kinome's afterword says they never decided on a gender, so either the author contradicted themselves or the scanlators misread the Japanese.
- Lost Technology: The first chapter revolves around Rojika and Rakka finding a vinyl record and wondering what it does. They play frisbee with it for a while, before their neighbor informs them it stores music, but they can't access it since they don't have a gramophone.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Massu-san's parents were against her marrying a member of the plant tribe. However, given the plant tribe only lives a fraction of the time as Massu-san's people, they might've had a point.
- Meaningful Name:
- Rakkasei can mean either peanut or falling star. Both are appropriate, since she is a small "sprouting seed" of the vanished human race and she was found in an escape pod by Rojika. Her nickname, Rakka, means "fallen", as in leaves falling during autumn.
- Shi-san, an artificial lifeform created to kill the 13 giants who ruined the planet, has a name that sounds like "death".
- Abel is not only named after the Biblical character, but his name is a homophone for "able", in reference to his (lack of) skill as a sorcerer.
- Mood Whiplash:
- All over the place, given its Crapsaccharine nature. Rakka's childish life will often have a sudden, jarring turn into the horrific, to remind the audience she is living after the end of her species.
- Chapter 16 starts with Rakka and Rojika trying to help a nebbish snake-dude confess to his crush. It ends with him murdering her because he thinks she's been replaced by an imposter, while another woman sets out to murder him on the same grounds. The final panel cuts back to Rakka and Rojika happily toasting themselves for all they've done to help.
- Mr. Exposition: Isaac-kun, some kind of bipedal doglike creature who always wears a black trenchcoat and bucket hat who maintains a large library and tells Rakka and Rojika whatever they need to know that chapter.
- Mukokuseki: Subverted. At first, Rakka appears to be your average manga-Japanese blonde girl with a distinctly Japanese name. However it is later revealed her parents were most likely of European descent, and that Rakkasei is the name Rojika gave to her when he found her.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Most characters are fairly detailed for nonhuman cartoon animals, but Rojika is just a triangle nose with round eyes stuck on top.
- Our Homunculi Are Different: Abel casts a spell to imbue an inanimate object with a soul, but it goes astray and lands inside the humongous peanut Isaac-kun grew, which Rakka has started raising as if it were a child, bringing it to life.
- Pastiche: Of 2010-ish Cartoon Network shows. Aside from the aforementioned Adventure Time, it also takes place in a world of weirdo animal people like Regular Show, with Rojika having nearly the same design as Rigby.
- Plant Person: Massu-san's husband is a member of the plant tribe, which doesn't live near their village.
- Platonic Co-Parenting: Rakkasei is smitten with a giant peanut Isaac gifts her and takes care of it as if it were a baby. At first Rojika thinks she's crazy, but when it's accidentally imbued with a soul by Abel, he joins her in taking care of it even though he's already her own foster parent.
- Posthumous Character: Abel's big brother Cain, in whose shadow he lives.
- The Power of Love: Kindly old lady Massu-san claims love conquers all, in a flashback to when she married her husband. It becomes darkly ironic since he's catatonic and begging for death, but she won't pull the plug since she can't understand what he's saying.
- The Reveal: Chapter 8 reveals the backstory of the apocalypse and Rakka, who fell to earth in an escape pod as a baby.
- Save the Villain: When the father of Abel's bully is trapped in a landslide, Abel uses his "clumsy" ability to make things explode to destroy the rocks and free him.
- Secret Diary: Rakka reads Rojika's diary to get an idea for a birthday present. From what we see, it's filled with dry, blunt, one sentence descriptions of what happened that day, all written in chickenscratch.
- She's a Man in Japan: Potentially. The English scanlations routinely use "she" to refer to Rakkasei, but the final author's note at the conclusion of the series claims Kinome-sensei never decided on a gender.
- Spot the Imposter: The shy snake-dude from chapter 16 suspects the reason his crush Elmi-san doesn't smile when he confesses is because she's been replaced with an imposter. Unfortunately, when he "saves" her by murdering her "imposter" with a butcher's knife, he can't find the real one. The story then cuts to a woman who has a crush on him, who suspects he is an imposter since he was acting unusually happy (when talking about Elmi-san). She grabs her own butcher's knife and sets out to "save" him from his "imposter".
- Suck Out the Poison: Bakubaku does this to save Rakka's life from a deadly insect bite. However, it works in his case because Bakubaku has the ability to eat anything, even draining something's color or getting the core out of a nut without cracking it open.
- Taken Off Life Support: Massu-san's husband, who comes from a species that only lives for twenty years and has been kept alive for over fifty by medical machines, is begging to be taken off life support. But nobody understands the Morse code his machine outputs, so they keep him going.
- Token Human: Rakka, a young girl, is the only human present, while various human artifacts are scattered everywhere and covered in undergrowth.
- Tyke Bomb: Although Abel seemingly has limited magical power, truthfully he is an extremely rare sorcerer (only one is born every one hundred years) whose power works on beings with souls, and he was powerful enough to obliterate threatening wild animals while still a baby.
- Unwanted Gift Plot: In chapter 4, Rakka reads Rojika's diary to get an idea what he wants for his birthday. But his awful handwriting convinces her that he wants a rare insect from a distant forest, whereas he actually wanted a baked potato. When she ventures out to get it, putting herself at risk, he is forced to pretend he enjoys having an ugly insect in a bottle.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The series draws heavily from Adventure Time, from the general (the premise and cartoony post-apocalyptic aesthetics) to the specific (Bakubaku can suck the color out of objects, like Marceline the Vampire Queen). The most blatant is an early chapter involving Rakka and Rojika freaking out about a barnyard animal that shows up on their lawn in the middle of the night and stands out there watching them for no apparent reason, a carbon copy of "The Eyes" with a cow instead of a horse.
- "YEAH!" Shot: At the end of the first chapter, Rakka and Rojika improvise some scat as they imagine what kind of music is on the vinyl record they found. They cap their impromtu jam session off by jumping into the air and posing in front of the sunset.
