The Fall 2017 Manga Guide

A Polar Bear in Love

What's It About? 

A little seal strays too far from the hole in the ice where his mother is hunting and comes face-to-face with a polar bear. Terrified that his life is about to come to an end, he's shocked when the bear proclaims his love for him and asks for the seal's hand in marriage. So begins the polar bear's quest to prove his never-dying love for the one seal he swears never to eat while the seal tries to believe in the terrifying predator's promises, certain the bear is about to devour him at any moment.

A Polar Bear in Love volume 1 (11/21/2017) is an original manga by Koromo that will be published by Yen Press in paperback for $15.00 and in digital format via comiXology for $6.99. An anime adaptation has been announced, but details are forthcoming.

Is It Worth Reading?

Austin Price

Rating: 4

A Polar Bear in Love is easily the most adorable of this fall's releases. The conceit could not be sweeter. Nor could the character designs: mismatched couple seal and bear are so round, so soft, so sloe-eyed and dopey that it's difficult to think they weren't scientifically engineered to sell a new toy line. Creator Koromo could just as soon hold back on the perfectly paced stupid humor or the surprisingly inspired moments of chemistry between these two and still the volume would work as a catching little piece of pop art.

Strangely, though, it may also be one of the most emotionally effective of this season's debuts. Polar bear's backstory is a surprisingly raw slice of sentiment that somehow both provides a goofy explanation for his love of seal and an utterly believable tale of loss and woe.

It should – and does – feel manipulative. It doesn't come by its pathos the same way To Your Eternity or Spirit Circle do, with inspired storytelling and clever writing. The transition from adorable gag comedy To Heart-rending tragedy comes too early and is too sudden a break with the established mood to play naturally; it's too easy to wring tears out of the audience when one subjects adorable, helpless animals to violent loss and loneliness.

And yet somehow, despite all of that, nothing about these moments feel dishonest. At worst the manipulation just feels clumsily earnest. There is something sincere in the tragic material that suggests Koromo is taking the emotions of this story more seriously than its generally flippant tone and its idiotic sensibilities hint, an unnamable element that actually makes seal's constant fear of being eaten simultaneously funnier and sadder when it becomes clear his fear is very justified. It's not an effect that feels earned so much as stumbled upon, but it's more than welcome.

Some of these jokes should be repeated less, yes: the seal's constant fear of the polar bear stops being believable long before the volume's emotional climax. It hobbles what proves to be a very fun dynamic for a bit too long. And the interlude where seal's mom takes him away for his protection is so oddly paced and plotted it needs a complete restructuring. These are just quibbles, though: the volume ends so srongly I wondered why there even needed to be further installments.

I'm not entirely certain what more can be done with this concept – I'm afraid it could grow stale if left to repeat on loop. But the fact that a series I was so ready to dismiss turned out to be one of the most charming of all has me curious enough to look forward to the next installment. Koromo may very well be a true talent still developing.

Rating:

There's not much to A Polar Bear in Love, but its intriguing concept and adorable art makes the first volume difficult to put down. The polar bear's well-intentioned love is so bizarrely out of left field that it's almost as startling to the reader as it is to the poor little seal. However, with the additional insight provided by the polar bear's thoughts, the reader knows much earlier on that his affections are genuine (if misguided), so there's little sense of danger in these pages, no matter how hard the terrified seal shakes. In fact, the nearest thing there is to conflict is the fact that polar bear just won't take a hint. His stubbornness could be framed as patience, but his persistence does carry with it a level of discomfort, even if it's a romance between fictional animals and not people. Then again, that is the entire crux of the series and the polar bear manages to make himself likable and empathetic through flashbacks and through his efforts to protect and comfort the seal, so A Polar Bear in Love is bound to elicit conflicting emotions.

The roller coaster of emotions for which the story is responsible aside, the highlight of this volume is the art. Koromo draws the bear, the seal, and the other denizens of this arctic world with such finesse, it's surprising these weren't simply the designs for a line of Sanrio-esque merchandise. Every creature in this land is round and soft and feels safe and comfortable—a few moments in the polar bear's harrowing flashbacks excepting. The heartwarming art makes the reader want to reach in and hug the seal, too. Naturally, given the main characters and the setting, the majority of the manga is basic white with black outlines, but the lack of interesting backgrounds and screentones only helps convey the simplicity of this strange tale.

A Polar Bear in Love volume 1 is an adorable, chuckle-inducing, fast-paced read. While readers may feel especially sorry for the seal and view the relationship that develops between him and the polar bear with mixed feelings, it's more heartwarming than alarming in the end. Readers looking for a short, sweet read could do worse.

Rating:

Falling somewhere between “cute” and “kind of touching,” A Polar Bear in Love is a bit of an oddity that I'm doubtless overthinking. Following the adventures of the eponymous polar bear and the seal pup he falls madly in love with based on its fluffy white baby fur, the story is part fable about how we can all get along and part ridiculous love story that harps on its single joke about how the seal is terrified that the bear will change his mind and eat him. Needless to say, this is an uneasy mix of themes.

When creator Koromo is giving us Polar Bear's backstory, the book fares a little better. The Arctic isn't the most forgiving environment, so after baby Polar Bear's first family rejects him and second is eaten by a different male polar bear, he's forced out on his own as a cub. His encounter with a deliberately beached blue whale further deepens the sadness of his story, while still driving home the lesson that you have to do what it takes to survive, which is likely what the adult male bear was doing when it dragged away Polar Bear's adoptive brother. Later a seagull waits futilely for Polar Bear to eat Seal so that he can clean up the mess in the symbiotic relationship that nature has designed for them. But Polar Bear's total refusal to eat the seal disrupts this. On the one hand, it's true love conquering even instinct, or perhaps Polar Bear's traumatic cubhood driving him to find a new family. On the other, did Polar Bear learn nothing from Whale or his adoptive mother? How is he going to survive?

That, of course, is hardly a factor in the story, nor should it necessarily be. It's just that Koromo's inclusion of the actual food chain sort of mucks things up in terms of story tone and flow. With the simple, almost toy-like art and vaguely absurd dialogue, A Polar Bear in Love just doesn't need tragic pasts or actual science, no matter how ancillary it is. Granted, I'm not sure there's enough joke or plot to carry the book past one or two chapters without those things, so…

Basically, this is cute. It has unneeded tragic aspects and food chain moments, but if you just want to see a polar bear hug a seal pup while trying to communicate his undying love, A Polar Bear in Love may be the only series out there that fits the bill.