YMMV / Shimeji Simulation

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was the Gardener justified in her plans to put a stranglehold on the natural order of the simulation, despite the suspicious results it soon produced including the lack of deaths? Or the Gardener is classified as a hero for doing so, while also being an anti-villain at the same time for trying to stop the morally grey extremist Big Sis, albeit on far more aggressive terms that closely bordered to murder?
• Common Knowledge: Despite the manga's seemingly innocuous premise of two girls in a Slice of Life setting, the manga is often mistaken for an Iyashikei work, when in reality it is an Existential Horror story focusing on surrealism.
• Cult Classic: Like its spiritual predecessor, Girls' Last Tour, Shimeji Simulation is fondly known as one of tkmiz's successful works and a modern classic, but due to being relegated to Mainstream Obscurity, the manga's mainstream success is largely underrated. At the very least, it is the most well-known Comic Cune manga internationally, though it isn't saying much.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Big Sis is the older sister of Shijima Tsukishima, known for her intelligence but aloofness. Inventing technologies like the Raw Fish Generator, Twin-Flounder Motor, a giant excavator and a sea urchin-like device, Big Sis is nothing short of genius for her plans to uncover West Yomogi's true nature. She devises a plan to dismantle West Yomogi and alter it from the inside by sending her sister into the Dreamscape, which unlocks Big Sis the ability to dreamwalk, a plan that would become essential before her confrontation with the Gardener as she uncovers the real truth behind West Yomogi and the world within it being a "calculation". She is able to deduce the Gardener's involvement in imposing a stringent order within the simulation, as she took notice of the lack of accidents and deaths across the town, as well as the world being a simulated reality. Maintaining a calm and collected expression throughout the confrontation with the Gardener, Big Sis adds that anything about the world they are in is a "papier-mache" and no "mere Gardener" can stop her plan. She later outwitted the Gardener when she used the conch-shaped device to release the Fish With Names, leading to the town and the world being permanently altered to her specifications and with humanity having the unrestrained means of freedom. Despite the future consequences her actions ultimately caused, in the form of her clone, Big Sis (as a fish) ultimately atones for her actions before dying and tells Shijima to go back in time to reverse all of the damage.
  • The Big Sis Clone is the Evil Doppelgänger of Big Sis, created from the prime's accidental discovery of humanity's boundaries in the Rock World. She initiates her plans to spread the Key and its powers to humanity by cleverly manipulating the Mosasa Dogs, who tells them that they can become music in the first place, and use their concert as a broadcast signal. By using their performance as a "resonance effect", the Sis clone notes at her prime how the Key is used to "unlock" people the ability to change oneself, not just by changing reality in a whim. Despite the prime Sis' attempts of restraining her clones, the Sis clone pulls off a calculated plan at the end when she managed to have the powers of the Key spread across the school festival audiences and subsequently the whole world with the concert. Her actions at the end, while it caused consequences to the already-damaged fabric of the simulation, mirrored her prime's goals of granting humanity unrestrained freedom from the clutches of the simulation's stringent natural order.
• Signature Scene:
  • Big Sis breaking the simulation that kicks off the second half of the series.
  • The cameo appearances of Chito and Yuuri within the train that Shijima is riding is a Walking Spoiler no one sees it coming, in line due to how they are turning out to be both Canon Character All Along and are connected to the manga's canonicity, as Yomikawa's revelation becomes more and more connected.
• Tear Jerker: After the first Wham Episode, Chapter 30, this trope slowly becomes common.
  • The backstory of Big Sis and Shijima documented their hardships as orphans in their Orphan's Ordeal, including Big Sis being the unfortunate target of bullying by her peers for her differing interests.
  • Chapter 44 plays this trope straight. After Shijima kicked Majime out of her life in what looked like a failed romantic getup in the previous chapter, she was virtually alone in a Blank White Void, a chaotic world metaphorically symbolising her isolation and loneliness, with only her contemplating her own actions, until she met Yomikawa in her strange-looking library. But the end of the chapter shows Shijima breaking down in tears in a small, secluded piece of a room, lamenting for her own actions as to how she was careless for her actions towards her one and only friend.
  • Chapter 45 reveals a dying Big Sis, in her fish form, tearily atoning for her actions in the past, while giving Shijima a Last Request: fixing everything by going back in time. Subsequently, this said plan also has a major setback: Shijima is forced to distance herself from the people she knows in order to not interfere with the changes.
  • Chapter 47 is this. It starts off with what seems to be West Yomogi that went back to normal where Majime suddenly shows up and cheerily greets her best friend, before transitioning to the scene with Shijima and the Hole-Digging Club members on a trip to Nara and later with Shijima and Majime in a romantic relationship. However, the scene cuts back to present... With Shijima who is virtually alone and all by herself in her own world with nothing but the lone house she stays while suffering from increasing pain of loneliness every single day in 1400 years, making this an especially heartbreaking scene as her goal during the previous two chapters distanced herself from the people she knew closely including Majime.