A Patch of Dreams

A few more items to add to my list of things I’ve read but not talked about include Just a Girl 1-2 and Elemental Gelade 1-2, with 3 being added to the list tonight or tomorrow. Right now though, I get to talk about A Patch of Dreams.

I had heard of the series Ku’s World by the same author some time ago and been intrigued, and I was happy to get this one (which is a sequel, or a continuation of Ku’s World? I’m not sure). This one is by far the best of the Fanfare books I’ve read.

The gist is that the main character has a dream world called Ku’s World that she dreams about continuously, with each dream picking up where the last left off. There are many things that are cool about this world, including a tiny shirtless king, a little Cousin It-looking thing, and a goat with googly eyes that they ride around on. The main character has this dream world, and she meets up with people she has been separated from (by death or other means) in it. She stops dreaming about it in High School, but the dreams come back to her in college as she becomes pregnant. There are issues surrounding that event that are played out in Ku’s World, but basically one of her old friends is trying to drag her back into Ku’s World as a replacement for reality. I think. Something bad will happen if she returns with this friend, at any rate.

She often talks about her going completely insane as she discusses Ku’s World with her partner. There’s not much logic or sense to it, and the real-life people she meets there are given really tragic backgrounds interspersed with lots of little Ku’s World playtime.

I’m sure there was a deep psychological meaning to this that completely flew over my head, but the entire concept of this girl’s dream world and how it played a part in her reality as well was amazing. There were plenty of times I was confused and bored, but I loved this volume so much. A lot of the story is about the main character coming to terms with death as it applies to her and her friends, which is also an interesting theme to use with the dream world.

I can’t say much critical about this, because I’m not exactly sure how to critique its bad points. I know it’s not for everyone, or even most people, but it was amazing all the same. It was not entertaining in the way that I liked to be entertained by manga, but the time spent on this volume was better invested than most of the other stuff I’ve been reading lately, to be sure.