EarthlingsOriginal Japanese is the sophomore novel by Japanese author Sayaka Murata, released in 2018 in Japan and globally (with an English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori) in 2020. It tells the story of Natsuki Sonomura, a young girl who believes she has been chosen by an alien named Piyyut to save Earth from the Wicked Witch, who has been using her magic to corrupt the hearts of humans. None of this is true, of course - Piyyut is just an ordinary keychain plush, and Natsuki's magic wand is just an elaborate origami - but it makes Natsuki feel like she's needed. She is neglected by her parents in favour of her bratty and neurotic older sister Kise, and finds a kindred spirit in her cousin Yuu, who suffers from similar neglect and copes by believing that he's actually an alien, and that his mother Ritsuko's verbal abuse of him was simply her telling him the truth about his identity.
While Natsuki is visiting her grandparents for that summer's Obon festivities, she and Yuu promise each other that they'll get married and find a way to get Yuu and Piyyut back to their home planet of Popinpobopia. But life for Natsuki goes downhill fast after Obon, and a horrific event results in Yuu and Natsuki being forbidden from seeing each other ever again.
Now a young woman in an asexual Marriage of Convenience with the similarly-traumatised and restricted Tomoya, Natsuki attempts to live a normal life and become brainwashed by "The Factory" (aka Japanese society) in order to forget her shattered childhood. But when the couple eventually reach the stage in their marriage where they're expected to finally start a family, those horrors begin to catch up with Natsuki and she decides to rely on the magic of Popinpobopia once again...
Please note that due to the highly deconstructive and disturbing nature of the book's events, there will be major spoilers on this page that are best avoided if you are intending to go into the book blind. You Have Been Warned.
- Abusive Parents: Natsuki's parents (particularly her mother) ignore her and instead devote most of their attention to their oldest child Kise. This quickly deteriorates into physical and verbal abuse after Natsuki is raped by Mr. Igasaki, and only gets worse after her and Yuu are caught having sex.
- Ambiguous Ending: A rescue crew finds Natsuki, Yuu and Tomoya in the abandoned house of Natsuki and Yuu's grandparents, with them having eaten the corpses of Mr. Igasaki's parents as well as parts of each other. Now descended into blissful insanity, Natsuki fully accepts her identity as a Popinpobopian and leaves the house for the first time in weeks as the rescue crew looks on in horror and shock.
- Arc Words: "Always survive, no matter what."
- Asshole Victim: Mr. Igasaki, and later his parents.
- Baby Factory: Natsuki sees everyone in society as components to "The Factory", a massive machine dedicated to pumping out children and keeping itself alive without any regard for the wellbeing of its "parts", since replacements will always come. Her goal for most of the story is to save herself and her loved ones from becoming part of "The Factory" and return to their "home planet".
- Blaming the Victim: Kise reveals around the middle of the book that she was secretly jealous of Natsuki for being raped by Igasaki, since he was a good-looking and admired young teacher that she and many other girls had a crush on, and believes Natsuki to have gotten lucky but "wasted her chance" to be with someone like him.
- Caught with Your Pants Down: The turning point of the novel comes at the end of Chapter 3, when Natsuki's extended family finds her and Yuu having just had sex near their grandfather's grave.
- Cassandra Truth: Natsuki tries, at multiple points, to tell people that Mr. Igasaki raped her. No one listens or cares.
- Chastity Couple: Played with. Natsuki and Tomoya marry with zero intentions of consummating, and when people find out the two of them have never had sex, they assume they're this and make it clear it's unacceptable for two "respectable" adults to live this way, with both their respective parents basically ordering them to have sex already. However, it's actually an all-out Marriage of Convenience; the two have no romantic feelings for each other and got married just to get people to leave them alone. Then that becomes murky as the two of them, along with Yuu, embrace their "alien" nature more and more—Natsuki eventually says she's glad to have married Tomoya, and while the two insist they don't love each other, their actions suggest otherwise, though where the lines between romantic, platonic, and sexual blur is deliberately ambiguous.
- Coming and Going: Natsuki and Yuu end up consummating their "marriage" near their grandfather's grave the day after his funeral; it's also heavily implied that Natsuki is going to commit suicide in the moment before they're caught.
- Coming of Age Story: The first three chapters serve as this for Natsuki, which really says just how horrible her life becomes.
- Cool Teacher: Mr. Igasaki is considered this by his students at the cram school. It's actually a carefully manufactured facade so he can prey on his female students, in particular Natsuki, the one he ends up raping.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Pretty much all of the criticisms that Natsuki has of the "factory" have a point. Some specific examples include: Tomoya's parents advising Tomoya and Natsuki that they should just hurry up and have sex and children already, and, once they've done that, Tomoya can "fool around" ("fooling around" being the "reward" that a man gets for becoming a parent); Natsuki's mother insisting that marriage and children are the only things that can make a woman happy despite having clearly resented her children; Natsuki's sister telling Natsuki that she can only be happy with a husband and family whilst also having an affair, as well as her having covered up the evidence of Natsuki's crime, not out of love for her sister, but out of concerns for her own reputation; and Natsuki's friends only being sympathetic upon hearing that she was sexually abused if they didn't know Mr. Igasaki was young/conventionally attractive, and losing sympathy once it becomes clear that her trauma is preventing her from finding a man. It's clear that, despite Natsuki committing many unspeakable acts, the emotional road she took to get there is perfectly understandable and is a deliberate criticism of modern Japanese society.
- Downer Ending: The Ambiguous Ending can be interpreted this way, as considering the many crimes they've committed by this point (Natsuki's murder of Mr. Igasaki, her killing his parents and cannibalising their remains, Tomoya attempting to have incestuous sex with his older brother and the trio breaking into several homes for food), it's likely they'll be in prison or mental hospitals for the rest of their lives. Even if they somehow walk free, they've probably all been disowned by their families and likely would have no hope of reintegrating into society (though considering their home lives and general feelings toward their society, this may be a good thing, with the book ending on a triumphant note).
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: The pedophile rapist Mr. Igasaki has parents who genuinely love him. Deconstructed, as this leads to them brushing off his crimes and trying to murder one of his victims.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- The family is naturally horrified to discover that Natsuki and Yuu had sex at their grandfather's gravesite (though it's unclear whether they found the incest, the "preteens having sex" thing, or the perceived slight against the recently deceased more offensive). Deconstructed; Natsuki reflects that when she tried to talk about an adult raping her, she was called a liar and punished for it—so why is her having consensual sex with someone her own age over the line? The adults don't take kindly to Natsuki calling them hypocrites.
- Natsuki sees nothing morally wrong with incest, but is disconcerted to learn that Yuu, for most of his life, has simply done whatever others wanted him to do, with no regard for what he wanted, and asks him if he only slept with her because she made him. He assures her that he'd wanted to, but she's not sure he's not just saying that because he can tell it's what she wants to hear. Justified, as Natsuki is a rape victim herself, so it makes sense that that'd be where she drew the line.
- Foreshadowing: While talking with Natsuki, Kise reveals that the reason she seems so happy in her marriage is because she's secretly having an affair on the side. The final chapter has her husband find out and confront her about said affair, prompting her to spill Natsuki's secret out of misplaced spite.
- Fourth-Date Marriage: Tomoya and Natsuki only met three times before agreeing to get hitched.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: After an awful childhood, Natsuki is desperate to be "brainwashed" so she can conform to Earthling society and be as close to happy as she can be. Tomoya is more resistant to the brainwashing, but does want people to leave him alone. Had people just done that, the two would've continued living in quiet nonconformity, never quite blending in with "normal" society but being unoffensive enough, and largely harmless to those around them. But no, people just haaaaaaaad to meddle... By the end, Natsuki is a triple murderer, and she, Tomoya, and Yuu are all cannibals.
- Hate Sink: Natsuki's mother and sister aren't very likeable, with her mother being an abusive parent who takes her work frustrations out on Natsuki and later mercilessly tears her down verbally after she confesses to being molested by Mr. Igasaki, and Kise being a spoilt Alpha Bitch who repeatedly manipulates and blackmails Natsuki and eventually rats her out to Igasaki's parents after her own infidelities are revealed.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Near the end of the book, Natsuki, Yuu and Tomoya eat the corpses of Mr. Igasaki’s parents as well as parts of each other.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Double Subverted with Mr. Igasaki: he gets away with his initial harrassment and rape of Natsuki, but is later brutally murdered by her in his sleep. However, his crimes are never revealed to the public, leaving his legacy as that of a brilliant young man taken too soon rather than the slimy child predator he really was.
- Kissing Cousins: Natsuki and Yuu are introduced as having been boyfriend and girlfriend while in their early teens. It's later revealed that Natsuki, having been abused by Mr. Igasaki and rapidly losing her mind, asks Yuu to have sex with her, and they're caught not long after the act by their relatives. Yuu as an adult insists that what they'd done was wrong; later in the novel, however, he changes his mind and enters a non-sexual relationship with her again.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Mr. Igasaki is brutally murdered by Natsuki, whom he raped.
- Kise's affair is ultimately discovered by her husband, with it being implied that he split up from her and took custody of their daughter. Unfortunately, this ends up spurring her to try and drag down Natsuki one last time...
- Magical Girl: Natsuki's early delusions center around her having a wand that gives her magical powers to defend the world against evildoers.
- Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Igarashi's parents refuse to believe that their son was a paedophile and rapist, not even when they're attempting to murder one of his victims.
- Manchild: Kise is firmly this as an adult, acting like a spoilt child despite having a husband and child of her own. She veers into Psychopathic Manchild territory when she rats out Natsuki to Igasaki's parents after her husband discovers she's been having an affair, choosing to blame Natsuki once again rather than accept the consequences of her actions.
- Marriage of Convenience: Desperate to marry someone and get her family off her back, Natsuki stumbles across a website specifically for people looking for the same thing. She chooses Tomoya because, like her, he doesn't want any sex, and he also has a list of simple, easy-to-understand rules that give Natsuki some reassurance. The two sleep in separate bedrooms and only occasionally eat meals together, but get along well and seem fairly happy, and their division of household labor is heavily implied to be far more egalitarian than that of other married couples they know.
- Parental Incest: Downplayed, but implied to have happened between Tomoya and his mother, who was overinvolved in his life and forced him to bathe with her until he was fifteen, which is likely indictive of some level of emotional incest. It's why he has such a strong aversion to the idea of actually having sex, despite feeling sexual attraction.
- Pet the Dog: When Natsuki and Yuu are caught after having had sex, the adults all lose it, with their respective parents reacting with downright abuse. All the other relatives are disgusted and do nothing to intervene with the children's punishment. However, years later, one of the uncles sincerely apologizes to Natsuki, saying he and the other adults handled the situation entirely wrong, and they should've been more forgiving since she and Yuu were only kids at the time.
- Polyamory: After the three of them choose to leave Earthling society, Natsuki, Yuu, and Tomoya essentially function as a quasi-romantic triad, despite vowing to live their lives only for themselves as individuals. Natsuki even starts to feel some sexual urges for the first time since her preteen years, once she's alone with the two guys.
- Rape and Revenge: Natsuki takes her revenge by breaking into Mr. Igasaki's house and murdering him in his sleep, although she's not really in control of herself at the time.
- Rape as Drama: Natsuki is manipulated into giving oral sex to Mr. Igasaki and later has sex with Yuu (which technically counts as rape in most jurisdictions since they were both twelve, and thus any consent they gave would be considered invalid). While Natsuki's life wasn't exactly sunshine and roses before she was raped, the incident broke her so severely that she still grapples with it as an adult, and it serves as the catalyst for her slow slide into insanity.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Igasaki's parents kidnap Natsuki and try to beat her to death after Kise tells them that Natsuki murdered their son.
- Sanity Slippage: Natsuki starts to deteriorate mentally after Mr. Igasaki rapes her, frequently dissociating, hallucinating and lashing out at others. Her fantasies about Popinpobopia also become more and more fleshed out, as it becomes apparent that they're little more than a mutual coping mechanism for Natsuki and Yuu's traumas. She seems to have mostly recovered by adulthood, but quickly slips back down again after reuniting with Yuu and realising what really happened to her as a child.
- Sense Loss Sadness: After Mr. Igasaki rapes Natsuki by forcing her to give him a blowjob, she loses her sense of taste, and after she later talks to them on the phone, she loses most of her hearing and keeps hearing phone-like static in the ear she had the receiver in. She finally regains both of them after she, Yuu and Tomoya kill and cannibalize Igasaki's parents.
- Spoiled Brat: Kise is fawned over by her and Natsuki's parents, her every whim being catered to, and as a result, she's a nasty, self-centered little brat. Even one of the uncles notes that her parents really shouldn't indulge her so much, but they don't listen.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Natsuki starts heavily disassociating after being raped by Mr. Igasaki, having out-of-body experiences and hallucinating Piyyut giving her guidance. This culminates in her murder of Igasaki, with everything being bright pink, Igasaki's blood being a "golden fluid", Igasaki himself being "possessed by the Wicked Witch" and Piyyut madly chanting in her ear until he's certain that the Wicked Witch has been defeated. It isn't until she's much older that Natsuki fully realises what she did that night.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Natsuki serves as this to Yuu in the latter half of the book, dragging him back into their childhood delusions despite him wanting to move on and live a normal life.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Mr. Igasaki is beloved and respected by the community despite secretly being a dangerous child predator. This makes it near-impossible for Natsuki to speak out about what happened to her, since most people don't believe he would do something like that, or (in Kise's case) are even jealous of her for becoming the object of his twisted desires.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Natsuki does some really awful things, but she's had a wretched life and from her perspective, everything she does is perfectly understandable. When seeing things through her eyes, you see why she thinks the things she does are acceptable, or simply the only way to survive.
