The three stories in Lost Girls by Hiroshi Seko allow readers to get inside the heads of two of the most withdrawn characters in Hajime Isayama's hit series Attack on Titan: Annie and Mikasa - and it is beautifully done.
In the first novella, Mikasa, through a dream about an alternate path her relationship with Eren might've taken, comes to a shattering realization which fuels her will to fight.
The second novella follows Annie, as a Military Police officer investigating the disappearance of a missing person in the slums of Wall Sina, keeping up a deft and fascinating interior monologue the whole way.
The two girls interact in the final, titular short story, and their simple but guarded conversation sheds some more light upon who the both of them really are.
I enjoyed this book very much - even more so because I have been a fan lf AoT for years now, and have always Wanted More. Lost Girls did not disappoint. It provides the insight it promises, through engaging, gently-paced narratives with these fascinating characters at their center. The language was slightly weird? but I'm going to chalk that up to a poor translation. (the Japanese language is full of nigh-untranslatable concepts, and as such any English rendering of an originally Japanese text will always sound at least /slightly/ off.)
My favorite story was the one about Annie. Mikasa's entire novella has this bizarre, dreamlike quality which, though entirely appropriate considering the setting, threw me off quite a little. By contrast, 'Wall Sina, Goodbye' displayed a solid, casual everydayness that appealed to me much more, as it gave some insight into Annie's day-to-day life, n element quite lacking from the original source material (she's a secondary character, after all). I loved the worldbuilding - the bar dances, the drugs, the cigarettes and alcohol and decrepit buildings - the overall bleak amd dirty feel of it all. I felt a lot of sympathy for Annie as I read, because her thoughts and attitude just leaped off the page; it is so very true that language is the medium best suited to conveying interiority.
I was choked up with emotion upon turning the last page. Lost Girls is not to be missed.