Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated.
Do You Love Magic?
I picked up this manga pretty much right after I got seriously invested in Magic the Gathering, and its evolved into a pretty special work for me as times went on. My history with the game is unfortunately pretty brief, I got into it in my freshman year of college when my roommate proposed it as something to do while a devastating hurricane [https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/84/cyclonic-rift] (relevant to the time because I pulled this card around then) stopped us from leaving the house, I played for several set releases before briefly forgetting all about it. Now in my senior year with one of my longtime roommates gone, and another coming in, the full cast of my home life is now people that play this game. I sought another medium for communicating with my new roommate, as I didn't know him very well. The idea that popped into my head? Magic. I wonder what whim pulled me back to this game, I have other things in common with the guy, why Magic? But I'm even more clueless about what I missed the first time I got into it because this time I've just gotten so immersed in the game, every format is so interesting, deck building is ridiculously fun (and time consuming), and well. pack opening [https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/121/gamble] is the vice of every man. What's not to like?
Subete no Jinrui wo Hakai suru. Sorera wa Saisei Dekinai follows our glorious chuunibyou otaku protagonist, Hajime Kanou, also known as ✟CLOUD✟, as he strives to become the best player Magic has ever seen, as well as his rival in both academics and Magic, Emi Sawatari. Tracing several years, we see the development of the game we all know and love as new sets come out, how the meta changes, how the players find and adapt to new broken meta-game combos; all this alongside anxiety about the encroaching 21st century and the (less important) progress of human history as time marches onwards. It's very rare that we see a work so passionately focused on one thing, that so accurately captures what its like to be so entirely consumed by love for something that updates for it are your primary reference point for the world. We see constant allusions to cards in the game throughout the manga that characters are making and seeing how their life is filtered through the lens of the game that they are all experiencing and sharing together.
I hope it's something that everyone can relate to, in one way or another. Whether it be set releases in Magic, the next DLC or expansion in your favorite MMORPG, or the next novel in that series you love; I've gone through all of these at this point in my life, for games it's just a whole different feeling. Watching the community spring to life with every new update, speculating over what will be good, crafting new strategies, overcoming new metas, complaining with your friends about new updates and saying the company is doomed to all who will listen. Good times. Maybe its not good but I've had this experience with quite a few things, Destiny 1 and 2 probably being the primary example, which is funny in hindsight, but those days were honestly quite fun, learning new raid mechanics or watching the crucible meta fall apart as Bungie makes another bad decision like Stasis or letting Thorn two tap.
There's something terribly nostalgic about this manga, even though I wasn't alive in the 90s to experience (hell, I think the first limited event I participated in was Phyrexia: All Will Be One) but the youthful experience of growing up alongside something like this and living through it is captured just perfectly. The vigor and innocence with which Kanou approaches Magic is refreshing, contradicted by the harsh reality that Emi experiences in knowing that she won't be able to continue playing it so ardently all her life as work gets in the way. The manga is primarily looking back, from the perspective of Emi as she's wistfully recalling these days with Kanou and recounting the saga [https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/259/urzas-saga] of their childhood. It was quite hectic, with terrorist plots thwarted and a billionaire making hiring decisions over games of Magic.
It felt stupid at the time that I read it, I didn't like how the plot went in that direction, I preferred the earlier chapters where it was just about sets releasing and experiencing that in tandem with school life, tournaments, pre-release events at the card shop, and the advent of new metas like the "turbo genius" combo deck [https://moxfield.com/decks/SqFwtHUhbEGEPpZsG9O5uQ], things like that, but the life of Kanou really couldn't be experienced any other way, of course the way he overcame hardships in his real life was through the thing that he loved and lived for. That's how we all live, whether we recognize it or not, just framed differently. "If I get through this work I can finally relax and do x thing that I love" or it's that thing that gets them through hard times directly. When I started viewing it like that, it made a lot more sense to me why the story went in that direction.
Kanou Hajime is a man that lived for Magic, the most noble pursuit. It was what drove him, in school, in his life mission, and it is through Magic that he expressed himself. Similar to Aikatsu, I think this manga opened me up to another avenue of self-expression, or at least made me more conscious of it. No matter what you do, what game you're playing, what the hobby is, the way you do it reflects on who you are. No matter what, Kanou made sure black was the main color identity in his decks, because he thought it was cool. I get it. My staple colors are black and blue, this combo in the community generally representing evil and being a horrible person (not as evil as Azorius and Simic, perhaps?). Someone told me I was a bad person at my last event when I said I played Dimir in standard, at least. And I even played Boros at that pre-release, terribly undeserved.
The anxiety present in the manga about the turn of the century and Nostradamus' prophecy was tied in with the anxieties of growing up and leaving your childhood behind, an impending doom looming over Emi and everyone else as they grow up, all but Kanou Hajime. It was a prophecy that unfortunately comes true for everyone, Emi and everyone else got too wrapped up in their own lives to keep playing Magic. Emi, even after overcoming the many obstacles that compelled her to put it down in her youth, became too busy to indulge in her hobby and socialize, all she had was her memories of those youthful days. Until she met Kanou once more, their paths crossed as he joined her project for recovering the district after an earthquake [https://scryfall.com/card/cm2/95/earthquake] devastated it. Kanou who has been working his hardest and using all his potential to bring amenities to less fortunate people and develop humanity; all for the sake of allowing prospective rivals in magic that dwell in third world countries realize their potential. Ridiculous motivation, it's amazing.
The community aspect in this manga really is portrayed so masterfully, it's why I started going to card shops again, even by myself, and do events again, and I'm so glad I did, I really like playing limited. I feel the spirit of this manga when I do it, that sense of excitement experienced with everyone else as new cards release, before a meta is established trying to solve the puzzle of "what cards will be best," and the competitive environment surrounding the tournaments over those few extra packs. At the last one I did, for the teenage mutant ninja turtles UB of all things, I placed fourth while trying out a new color combo I'd never previously considered, as Kanou had to try things beyond mono-black, I had to go next and abandon my artifacts strategy and go Boros midrange, and I placed fourth. Proud of that. I've been totally moved by the overwhelming passion of this manga, it accompanies me as I go my way, and I hope others get to experience this too.
To sum it up, I do love Magic. I love this game, I look forward to continuing playing it with my friends, continuing my saga, to meet more people through it, to walk more plains [https://scryfall.com/card/tmp/332/plains], to experience my life alongside it and all the other things that I love. To live like Kanou, working his hardest at school, at work, at magic, and his other hobbies. To express myself and what I like through everything that I do.
And with that, https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/64/farewell.