Super charming graphic novel, glad I decided to read it! I’d been anticipating it for a while, since I saw a post made by the authors about it.

I was sucked in from the beginning, with some magically surreal visuals and storytelling that feel akin to something like “The Little Prince”, and a setting that, while it was futuristic, managed to still feel grounded in how it handled different issues such as queerphobia and the struggle to fit in. (In many different ways! There was Indu’s queerness, yes, but him also being a cultural outsider in the Indonesian setting, and being sorta anxious to branch out and meet new people.) I especially loved how Indu gradually bonding with his siblings and classmates was handled. His nerves felt accurate for a kid at that age, I didn’t think for a second his reactions felt out of place.

The bilingual representation was *chef’s kiss*. It’s rare for me to see passive fluency discussed—I’ve seen bits of it throughout other stories centering immigrants, but the term hasn’t ever been used before in something I’ve read! Got to learn a bit from that, hooray. I loved how Indonesian language was weaved into the story, too. I don’t speak it, so I had to go off of context clues, but I actually appreciate the lack of translation. I think it shows Indonesian readers (especially LGBTQ+ ones!) that this is something for them.

In general, though, the Indonesian rep was fantastic. It is so rare for me to see queer stories from within that culture (just because of normalized queerphobia, the Indonesian folks I’ve known that aren’t cishet are closeted irl for that reason), and I loved that even in a sci-fi fantasy like this, there was still spotlight on the pre-existing terminology. (I’d heard the term waria before, but not priawan!) Their inclusion was so normalized, but still left room for characters that weren’t using labels or still figuring themselves out. To have that kind of positive representation was so lovely. 

The art was also stunning!! Ugh I loved every page. Even the panels where there were less things going on visually. 

Tbh I loved the family and platonic dynamics more than the few romantic relationships in the story, they just had less time to develop or kinda exist on-page, but I still found the characters charming.

Overall, pretty great! My only other critiques are that the ending was pretty rushed, and some of the dialogue didn’t feel very natural.