In a distant dystopian future, Kamiya must choose between saving his family and saving himself.
Fool Night is a Psychological Sci-fi Thriller Seinen manga created by Yasuda Kasumi. It's been published in Big Comic Superior's manga magazine since November 2020.
In the distant future, the Earth is covered by thick clouds and deprived of warm rays of sunlight. Natural plants have all but withered, leading to low levels of oxygen everywhere.
However, humans have developed a technique to transform people into plants to produce a small amount of oxygen that allows mankind to keep surviving. In this world, everyone must decide: Will they live as humans in a bleak and uncertain world, or abandon their anguish to embrace a new life as plants?
This manga provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Both Toushirou and Yomiko’s parents weren’t the best. Toushirou’s mother was emotionally and psychically abusive, and Yomiko’s mother was emotionally distant, heavily pressuring her as a child, making her adhere to a strict studying routine.
- Matsuno Sumi, the piano payer, also had an abusive father, who would rip her hair out if she made a mistake while playing the piano, beating her to the point of tears.
- Action Girl: Kanaeno is a retired military officer who was born into the border guard.
- Amateur Sleuth: Because of his ability to understand spirit blossoms, Toushirou acts like one throughout the story, uncovering various pieces of information. Like the fact that Dr. Kudai and Anti-transfloration leader Hikasa Ken worked together to create Ivy.
- And I Must Scream: The fate of those who undergo transfloration. Stuck in their plant bodies, they gradually lose both their sentience and their ability to speak.
- Body Horror: People in the late stages of transfloration invoke this trope, their bodies warped and mangled into branches, flowers, and vines.
- Boom, Headshot!: Hikasa Ken shoots Mr. Sagai 's assistant right in front of him.
- Capitalism Is Bad: The entire transfloration system relies on people being desperate enough for money to agree to be turned into plants. Besides the main city, children from the Austercity are commonly transflorated just to serve as high-quality furniture for the rich.
- Crapsack World: The sun is blocked out by clouds, Oxygen levels are low, People routinely choose, (or are forced) to be turned into plants, and if they can’t afford to bail themselves out of prison, they’ll get shipped off to the slums. Sounds great!
- Made even worse when you consider that transfloration isn't even their only option for getting more oxygen. One of the higher-ups at the Transfloration Institute admits that if they tried hard enough they could create alternative oxygen sources, but they don't, because ultimately their main goal is to reduce the size of the population.
- Death of a Child: Kanaeno’s child is revealed to have died of leukemia and is implied to have been transflorated, (possibly in an attempt to extend the little time he had left).
- Downer Beginning: The manga starts with Toushirou being fired, having the money he was saving up to go to school be discovered by his mother, getting stabbed by her, attempting suicide in an effort to be transflorated, and then immediately getting robbed of his transfloration support funds anyways.
- Drives Like Crazy: When he’s informed that Yomiko is going to undergo emergency surgery and have half of her stomach removed, Toushirou drives Akira's car recklessly, breaking the headlights.
- Fantastic Science: There being enough advances in technology by 2300, that humans are now able to transform others into plants.
- Fate Worse than Death: Those who are transflorated slowly start to lose the ability to move around and talk, before eventually fully turning into spirit blossoms, barely sentient but still lingering on.
- Government Conspiracy: Ivy was created by the Anti-Transflroation Movement to make the Transfloration Institute look negligent in the eyes of the general public.
- Hair-Contrast Duo:
- White-haired Toushiro and Black-haired Yomiko.
- Blonde-haired Akira and Black-haired Kanaeno
- Hidden Depths: Despite being a hard-ass characterized by his dedication towards the transfloration institute, Akira also enjoys collecting uniquely patterned genetically modified goldfish.
- Implausible Hair Color: Toushirou’s stark white hair is never really commented on in universe, and appears to have been that way since he was a child.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Even though Akira was unfairly critical of Toushiro when he first met him, It makes sense why he would try and fire Toushirou after he deserted his squad for 3 days to try to hunt Ivy on his own, stealing a cop's gun to do so. Even more so when you remember that he wasn’t aware of Toushiro’s ability.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although When Akira first meets Toushiro, he insults him, questions his true motives, and even tries to fire him later on, He does actually stick up for Toushiro when he’s getting chewed out by the Police force, even offering to split his suspension. When asked why he did all this by Toushirou, all he says is “Couldn’t be helped”.
- Naïve Newcomer: Toushirou, since he never finished high school and is widely inexperienced with the interior politics of the Transfloration institute
- Not So Above It All: He still partakes in a card game with Toushirou, Yomiko, and Kanaeno despite calling them the “loser gang”
- Older Than They Look: Despite Kanaeno looking around the same age as Yomiko and Toushirou, she’s old enough to have had a child and protected Akira when he was a kid.
- Only in It for the Money: Early on in the story Toushirou explicitly states that he's only doing this for the money, telling Yomiko that he'll do anything, as long as "the money comes rolling in".
- Subverted, as the story continues on it's clear that Toushirou has long since stopped being motivated only by the money, fueled by desires to obtain spiritual happiness, and revenge for Yomiko.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Up until visiting the Austerity, Izumi Mukuru is only referred to by the plant they were transflorated into, Ivy.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Hiragishi Jin, Yomiko’s boss is extremely so. He’s willing to give Toushiro a chance to display his abilities and actively tries to find a way to protect him when his job is on the line.
- Secret Compartment: Toushiro is able to sense a hidden room in the Higurashi family's house thanks to his ability.
- Scenery Gorn: The Austercity, a dilapidated pornographically-poor town, filled with half-transflorated people, convicts, and rundown abandoned buildings, which Toushirou described as looking as if “Blood was seeping out of them".
- The farm within the Austercity, an area of land filled with children who have almost fully been transflorated into trees, bodies/trunks surrounded by iron wire for, “correction”.
- Sweet Tooth: Ivy has a preference for sweets and candies, attacking people it comes across holding them.
- Talking to Plants: After being transflorated, Toushirou gains the ability to talk to spirit blossoms.
- Taunting the Unconscious: After Akira is left unconscious in the hospital, after his encounter with Ivy, Kunibe insults him, calling him “Even worse than that white-haired brat Toushirou!”, threatening to pour poison down his Iv drip.
- Transflormation: The whole premise.
- We Used to Be Friends: Toushiro and Yomiko used to be close friends in childhood until Toushiro dropped out of high school and the two presumably lost contact.
- What Were You Thinking?: After discovering that Toushirou was the one who stole the cop's gun, Akira harshly scolds him and ends up firing him over it. Which isn’t followed through with since Akira is immediately attacked by Ivy afterward.
