''Global Garden'' (stylized in all caps) is a

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

Saki Hiwatari is a Japanese '' shōjo'' manga artist. Her first work, ''Mahōtsukai wa Shitteiru'' (''I Know a Magician'') was published in the weekly ''shōjo'' anthology ''Hana to Yume'' (''Flowers and Dreams'') in 1982. Her best-known work was '' Please ...

, who is best known as the creator of ''

Please Save My Earth , sometimes abbreviated ''Bokutama'', is a '' shōjo'' manga by Saki Hiwatari. It was published by Hakusensha from 1986 to 1994 in the magazine ''Hana to Yume'' and collected in 21 volumes (''tankōbon''). The series was adapted as a six-p ...

''. The series was published in

Hakusensha is a Japanese publishing company. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company mainly publishes manga magazines and is involved in series' productions in their games, original video animation, music, and their animated TV series. The c ...

's ''

Hana to Yume , also known as , is a semi-monthly Japanese manga magazine published by Hakusensha on the 5th and 20th of every month. The magazine is B5-size, and always comes with or free supplements, such as drama CDs, pencil boards (shitajiki), man ...

'' which comes out bi-weekly in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The series is completed at 8 volumes.

Story

The story begins in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

, 1954, with

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

. Einstein is living in regret of his discovery of mass-energy equivalence (''E'' = ''mc''²), believing it led to the construction of the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

. He meets two children, Hikaru and Haruhi, who can see the

past The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...

and

future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...

in their dreams. They tell him that ever since the

atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the on ...

Yggdrasil Yggdrasil (from Old Norse ), in Norse cosmology, is an immense and central sacred tree. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds. Yggdrasil is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'' compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional s ...

, the tree of life, is dying. However they discover that in the future there is a girl with special powers who saves the tree. Einstein then gives them drugs which slow their aging so they can meet this girl. He dies later the same day; April 18, 1955. He then becomes the story's disembodied

narrator Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the a ...

, following around the young boy Robin. In

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, 2005, Hikaru and Robin finally find the girl, Ruika. Ruika is pretending to be her young brother Masato, who died in an airplane crash, to keep her mother from grieving.

Characters

*Hikaru – A 'young' man driven by his need to meet a Goddess in the Global Garden. Since childhood, he has experienced dreams of her in several forms. He was given a pill to slow his aging, and though he's 60, he appears 18 or so. His mission is to save the Earth via a wish in the Global Garden. However, he finds the 'Goddess' in her human form a more important reason to live. *Haruhi – Another 'young' man driven by the same needs as Hikaru. However, Haruhi is twisted and selfish in his methods to secure the Goddess. He seems to care for no one except himself and his own wishes. *Robin – A seemingly cheerful and friendly mute boy. He was adopted by Hikaru after his adoptive parents died in a car accident. Oddly mature at times, this child is actually the clone of two people—the famous Einstein, and Hikaru himself. Eventually he receives the other 'half' of Hikaru's soul, and some of Einstein's memories. Then he realizes his true purpose—he is the key to the Global Garden. This came with nothing but anguish for the boy—it was at the cost of Hikaru's life. Robin didn't want to live without the people he loved and who were treasured family to him. *Ruika – The 'Goddess' in her present form, also called Verdandi. Ruika is a young girl trying desperately to live as her brother Masato, who died years before. Her mother would only see her as her brother. When she meets Hikaru and Robin, she begins to change and want to be herself, the girl Ruika who was buried for so long. She also learns to use the power within her. *

Volumes

References

External links

* {{Hana to Yume Shōjo manga 2001 manga Science fiction anime and manga Hakusensha manga