"Take me with you into the distant future."
Immortal Rain (Japanese title: Meteor Methuselah) is a shoujo manga series written and drawn by Kaori Ozaki. It ran in Wings from 1999 to 2011.
When Machika takes up her grandfather's legacy as Zol the Grim Reaper, she swears to take down the one bounty he couldn't: The immortal Methuselah. Upon finding him, she discovers the first of many problems with immortality: namely, such bounties are somewhat hard to cash in. Rather than let that stop her, she decides to follow Methuselah until she's able to achieve her goal. Methuselah, or Rain as he calls himself, appears at first to be nothing more than a clueless trouble magnet who can't play the broken violin he carries and thinks that letting himself get arrested is a valid form of transportation. But as time passes, and Machika finds herself drawn to Rain for more reasons than her grandfather's honor, the pair is caught up in a dangerous fight with a mysterious group looking for military technology long lost, and for creatures called Angels that Rain somehow knows how to kill. And she learns that Rain isn't just wandering the earth - he's waiting for something. Or someone.
A sidestory was also published about Rain and Zol's first meeting.
The first eight volumes were available in English through Tokyopop, but the manga has since gone out of print after Tokyopop stopped publishing.
Tropes:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Machika's scythe, it easily cuts through anything she swings it at.
- Action Girl: Machika. Sharem also counts as an action woman, as well as Jilleena, one of her adopted children.
- A God Am I: Dora Folk, kinda.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Freya to Yuca, Machika to Rain.
- Ax-Crazy: Dora Folk. He takes a bit too much delight in the idea of cutting Ys up into pieces while anticipating that Ys will scream. And don't even get into the whole impregnating womens with hell spawn thing...
- Back from the Dead: Yuca through reincarnation, and Rain after book 5.
- As of Volume 10, Folk as well. Being thrown off a waterfall into a building, having the building collapse, and having the cave the building is in collapse didn't involve either the head or the heart being destroyed, so of course he shows up again.
- Beat Still, My Heart: the chest-ripping variant to Rain right before the Angel crushes it and almost kills him.
- Bifauxnen: At one point Machika's hired to be a young woman's chaperone - tuxedo and all. She is promptly mobbed by pretty girls.
- During her subsequent fight with Jilleena:
- Jilleena: "I won't lose to a boy!"
- Another time, Machika's mistaken for a boy, even though she's wearing her dress at the time.
- It would probably help if Machika didn't refer to herself with masculine pronouns.
- It even happens to some fans
.
- During her subsequent fight with Jilleena:
- Blessed with Suck: Aside from Rain's desire to just be human again, the immortality and accompanying powers he's gained are just not worth everything else he's lost.
- It doesn't help that he's constantly being hunted by people seeking immortality for themselves.
- Yuka too can be considered Blessed with Suck considering the fact that he is able to remember all his past lives... too bad this had driven him crazy
- Bounty Hunter: The Grim Reaper Zol, and his granddaughter Machika. Also some thugs in Machika's hometown.
- Break the Cutie: Oh, lord, it'd probably be a shorter list to mention the unbroken characters. Rain, Machika, Freya, Sharem to a degree, Ayla, Yuca somewhere along the line though we don't see it...
- Christianity is Catholic
- Combat Pragmatist: Machika resorts to face-scratching when fighting a super powered Dora Folk in chapter 44.
- Creepy Child: Yuca (as Ys) is very good at this, as he's physically 9 or so, but has lifetimes of knowledge and experience. Except when he tries to glare and reverts to a pouting prepubescent.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Rain
- Death by Childbirth: Yuca's poor mother.
- Death by Despair: Freya attempts this. It might have been better if she'd succeeded.
- Despair Event Horizon: Freya crossed it after one of the orphans died, and stopped eating.
- Sharem has also crossed this. The shoving-point was most likely when her husband accidentally ran over their son, but she's gotten to the point where she's offered to help her surrogate son wipe out all life on the planet.
- Yuca crossed this a long, long time ago. Hence his elaborate plan to die and stay dead.
- Determinator: Rain and Machika. Too many examples to sum up here, but Machika spent an entire year wandering around the world looking for Rain after she'd seen his heart crushed in front of her and there was almost no chance he was still alive.
- Doom Magnet: Rain. So much.
- Empathy Doll Shot: Subverted, because finding Mayu's teddybear abandoned on the floor leads Freya to go looking for the wayward girl, and see her get struck by a incoming missile.
- Enfant Terrible: Yuca aka Ys. Though he's not technically a child, he does wish to Kill All Humans.
- Evilutionary Biologist: Dora Folk, among others. Yuca has the knowledge, but he's not doing it For the Evulz.
- Express Delivery: Yuca's, which ends up being massively horrific.
- Fetus Terrible: the time between Yuca's conception and birth is about two months, in which time he grows to the form of a prepubescent boy in utero. Needless to say his mother doesn't survive.
- While he's still in the womb, his mother can feel him writing Rain's name over and over on the uterus wall. Eek.
- The woman Folk impregnated with an angel. Gah.
- Flying Dutchman: Rain is either this or Wandering the Earth.
- Freefall Romance Chapter 30 - Rain and Machika reunite after being separated for a year, he leaps high (like, hundreds of feet!?!) into the air with her. It's very sweet and picturesque. But how do they land? Or at least why isnt Machika squished? Must be the power of LOVE. Part of a larger Not the Fall That Kills You… recurring trope in this work.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Machika has done this a couple times so far, first to calm a panicked civilian during a fight with an Angel, and later to shut Yuca up so she can call him out on what he did to Rain.
- Handsome Lech: Eury Evans. The moment he realizes one of the people he's fighting against is, despite his initial impression, not a guy, he drops what he's doing and attempts to ask her out.
- Heel–Face Turn: Eury.
- Also, Yuca in the last third of the manga
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Rain for Freya, though it didn't so much work out.
- I Will Find You: Rain promises this to Machika when telling her to run from the imminent fight with Yuca. And when he apparently dies and never makes it to the meeting place, she pledges the same to him. and succeeds over a year later.
- Kick the Dog: Yuca stepping on the fallen baby bird. Considering that up until this point, he's seen as too cheerful and buddy-buddy with Rain to really be the same monster we've heard about, this moment is also good Foreshadowing.
- Also, Folk. His description of how he made one of the angels in Volume 6 is a hit of horror liberally spiced with Fetus Terrible. Our first introduction to him gives us this little gem:
Folk: (talking about someone who looks about eight, with a faint smile on his face) "How cute."Nurse: (smiles)Folk: (facial expression exactly the same) "I wanna make him cry."Nurse: (looks horrified) - Love Triangle: Freya loves Yuca, who doesn't love her. He's fascinated by Rain, who loves Freya. Freya thinks Rain is a dork.
- Mama Bear: Sharem. Her only natural child might have died, but don't mess with any of the orphans in her care.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Rain is over 600 years old. Machika is 14. However, given his non-existent history with women and his eternal youth, it's easy to forget.
- Mind Rape: This is how Yuca shows affection towards the only person he's ever cared about.
- "Because you and I are friends."
- Murder the Hypotenuse:
arguable motivation for what Yuca did to Freya. - Never Learned to Read: In the backstory at the orphanage, it's revealed that the older-teen Rain is illiterate. He gets educated. Which ends up leading to a sweet Love Confession.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Rain can get a large boat thrown at him, and he just responds by throwing back a freighter.
- Also, Yuca via reincarnation (to his eternal dismay), and the Angels.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Lucky for Rain, Machika, Yuca, and others, because they all fall or jump to what should be their death at least once.
- To the credit of the series, the 'being saved at the last minute from falling' thing is usually less being caught, and more the immortal jumping after the falling person and acting as a human shield. But still.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Subversion: Rain attempts this, but fails, as he actually is something of a spazz. Wonderfully demonstrated in several scenes where he attempts to claim he isn't Methuselah while accidentally breaking all the steel chains wrapped around him.
- Our Angels Are Different: And how.
- Parental Abandonment: The entire cast seems to consist of orphans. In fact, the only parents we encounter are trying to cope with the death of their child.
- Perma-Stubble: Dora Folk
- Physical God: Rain has Super-Strength, is damned hard to kill, doesn't age, and, according to Yuca, has more destructive powers as well.
- Posthumous Character: Freya and all the orphans, Zol.
- The Power of Love: Machika combines this with Determinator to do anything possible to find Rain after he is "killed" and taken by Calveria, including killing an Angel barehanded.
- Whether it plays any role in resolving things with Yuca remains to be seen.
- It did. :3
- Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: Awesomely subverted by Eury when Folk takes Ayla hostage. He tosses the gun up, turns away, then grabs the gun out of the air behind him and shoots Folk right in the heart.
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Subverted with Sharem in her first fight, and averted by Machika's 'dress with shorts' bounty hunting outfit.
- Really 700 Years Old: Rain is 624, but looks in his late teens, early twenties. Yuca (who's been reincarnated for millenia but looks like a little kid) is an even better example.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Though the official art can't decide on the protagonists' hair colors, Yuca almost consistently has blood-red eyes.
- Reincarnation: Yuca, aka the spirit of Methuselah. He's rather tired of it.
- Replacement Goldfish: Ys for Sharem.
- Sadistic Choice: Yuca's bet with Rain is a variation. Essentially, kill your best friend (every time he reincarnates), or watch him wipe out all of humanity.
- Yuca actually hopes he'll Take a Third Option; if he's demoralized enough over the years, Rain might help with the world-destroying.
- Second Love: Rain lost Freya, but gained Machika. The way the plot is going, Eury is probably going to wind up being this for Ayla. Just don't mention that to either of them.
- Series Continuity Error: The gender of the small fuzzy creature named Kiki is not mentioned in the original Japanese until around volume five or so, hence the confusion English translators had when it turned out Kiki was male.
- Sinister Scythe: Machika's assassination weapon of choice, which originally belonged to her "grandfather".
- Snow Means Death: subverted, in that the field of snow flowers Rain grows for Freya succeed in making her want to live again. Played straight with Machika charging into a blizzard after watching Rain die.
- Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Yuca's goal. Partly justified in that it would take the obliteration of all life for him to die and not come back. If all it took was a bullet, there would be no plot.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: When Folk and Rain have their show down at Noah's Ark. Folk throws at truck at Rain and Rain responds by throwing a friggin' boat at Folk. Rain lampshades this by saying 'I may have overdone it.' However, it doesn't keep Folk down for long.
- Waif-Fu: Machika is tiny, but also a Bounty Hunter.
- Walking the Earth: Rain, when he's not tired enough to consider the imprisonment-and-escape method.
- Was It All a Lie?: Rain asks Yuca about their childhood together in the orphanage. He has not yet given an answer.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Certainly not Yuca or Rain.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Yuca. Oh Good God, Yuca.
- World of No Grandparents: Given an odd sort of subversion. Machika calls Zoll Grandfather despite the fact he's clearly not old enough to have grandchildren.
- Actually, as revealed in the side story, Zol had a crush on the slave woman who was pregnant with Machika. When she died while giving birth, Zol adopted the baby. So he's more properly like an uncle.
- You Can't Go Home Again: This applies to Rain after all the orphans were taken from the church and died in a bioweapons research lab, he watched his two most important people die (but not before one betrayed him and turned him immortal), and everything was destroyed in the war. Then the bounty hunters got wind of him.
- Machika is on the run after attacking the thugs who killed her grandfather and fleeing with the bounty Methuselah. Though admittedly, after her grandfather died there wasn't much holding her there.
- Ayla is one of many refugees kicked out of her homeland after the death of their King.
