Interest
Manga About Pandemic, City Lockdown Gets Free New Online Serialization
posted on by Kim Morrissy
Ao Akato's Rieux wo Machi Nagara (While Waiting for Rieux) manga is getting a rerun weekly serialization on Kodansha's Comic Days online manga website. The medical suspense manga, which tells the story of a fictional town in Japan becoming overrun with a mysterious plague, originally ran in Kodansha's Evening magazine from 2017 to 2018 and comprises three volumes in total. The title is a reference to a character from Albert Camus's classic existential novel The Plague.
The timing of the rerun is no coincidence, as the new coronavirus COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the world. According to the manga's page on Comic Days, the first eight chapters were previously released for free, and this new serialization has been spurred by overwhelming response they received. "Although this work is fiction, and the scenario portrayed in it is different from reality, we hope it provides some help regarding 'the right way to be afraid,'" reads the introductory text.
The manga's entire story will be serialized weekly for free, although readers who purchase coins through the website or app will be able to read ahead.
On Twitter, Akato wrote: "By the time this weekly serialization ends, I hope the situation has calmed down in the real world..."
The first reported cases of COVID-19 were in Wuhan, China in December, and then the disease began to spread in varying rates and intensities across many parts of the globe through incubation in human hosts. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a world health emergency on January 30, and announced on March 11 that it is classifying the outbreak as a pandemic. As of Tuesday, the WHO reported that there are 754,948 infected individuals worldwide. 36,571 individuals have died from the disease.
As of Tuesday, the WHO reported that Japan has 1,953 cases of COVID-19 with 56 deaths. These numbers do not include the number of cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama. That cruise ship had 712 infected passengers with seven deaths.
The Japanese government is restricting travel to the country as the Japanese foreign ministry aims to raise the travel alert for these regions to level 3. The Tokyo government called for Tokyo residents to stay at home starting last Wednesday, after three straight days of record numbers of new COVID-19 cases.
Source: Comic Natalie
this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history