The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated.

What's It About? 

Travel back in time to the early days of Magic: The Gathering!

It's the nineties at Tokiwaga Middle School. And for gamers like Hajime Kano, the release of Magic: The Gathering means nothing will ever be the same again!

In everything he does, it seems like geeky Tokiwagi Middle School student Hajime Kano comes in second place behind popular honor student Emi Sawatari. But when Hajime takes a trip to a new game store he's been hearing about, their rivalry takes an unexpected turn. Welcome to the early years of Magic: The Gathering, when a trading card game shaped a generation forever!

Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated. has a story by Katsura Ise and art by Takuma Yokota, with English translation by David Evelyn and adaptation by Molly Tanzer. This volume was lettered by Joanna Estep. Published by Viz Media (October 8, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

I feel like this manga comes with a caveat: if you have fond memories of the early days of Magic: The Gathering, even if those days are when you, personally, got into it rather than the 1990s, you will probably enjoy this book a lot more. Although you can technically read it without any knowledge of the game – there are copious notes both on the page and in a glossary – it's really looking to tap into the nostalgia factor, particularly of that moment when you got hooked on MTG. Since I never did (although I did play a bit in the late 90s timeframe represented by this book, and I read some of the novelizations), I continually felt like I was on the outside looking in.

The story is about two middle school kids who are major MTG fans. One, Kano, is very open with it. He plays at school, he's loud about his prized black mono-deck, and he's just all-in on everything he cares about. The other, Sawatari, is a closet gamer. She's trying so hard to be the perfect honor student in all things that she's actively depriving herself of a lot of fun in the pursuit of perfection. She's also Kano's rival, although it's not entirely clear if that's deliberate on her part: when she transferred in, she knocked him off of his top-of-the-grade pedestal. This is one of the most interesting elements of the story because even though Kano sees her as his rival, he also admires her – not necessarily in a romantic way (yet), but as someone he'd like to be friends with. He's annoyed with her, sure, but he also thinks she's pretty cool, something that only grows when he goes into a card shop and realizes that she plays MTG, too.

At its core, Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated. is a story about two people moving closer to each other based on a shared interest. The late 90s setting allows for them to be worried about Nostradamus' prophecies about the end of the world while name-dropping pop culture tidbits for nostalgia value, but it really isn't all that important to the characters. They're just two kids trying to figure out their place in the world and enjoying their hobby, and there's something really sweet about that. It gets a little lost under the MTG stuff, though, which is why I think this will have the most appeal for Magic players. (Plus, the first edition comes with a limited-edition card.) It's an ode to the early days of the game and to a different time, and it does a good enough job of both to merit checking it out.

The Venn diagram circles between the categories “Magic: The Gathering players” and “manga readers” may heavily overlap, but they're not the same; I'm living proof. And yet, most of the friends I regularly talk about anime with will occasionally get together to play a friendly match while I read manga in the corner. Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated. brings these interests together. While I can't say it's enticing me to join in a match, as much as my husband would jump for joy if that happened, it's a charming love letter to 90's geek culture.

It probably helps that the manga's writer is only a year or two older than me. The story takes place in 1998, five years after the game's debut as it gained popularity, with only one year left before Nostradamus' predicted end of the world. Hajime Kanou, a high school junior, has two major interests: playing Magic and beating Emi Sawatari, the stuck-up girl who keeps beating him for the top spot at their school. When he discovers that she's secretly a skilled Magic player, they bond over their shared interest.

Even if you're not into Magic – and as established, I certainly am not – chances are that if you're reading this, you're a huge nerd. You probably have friends you initially connected with over a shared geeky interest, whether it be cards, manga, Homestuck, or something else. Perhaps you found that over time, your bond deepened beyond that interest, and you shared aspects of your life. Maybe, just maybe, your friendship turned to love. If you have that lived experience, you'll probably find something to connect to in Destroy All Humans, as Emi and Hajime spend time together, first as rivals and then as friends. The story is also imbued with a warm nostalgia for the peculiar mood just before the turn of the millennium when there was a buzz in the air that maybe something huge would happen.

If you are a fan of Magic, you'll likely get more out of the manga than I did. Turns out, that game has a lot of complicated rules! While I can enjoy it like I can enjoy a sports anime about a sport I have no interest (by which I mean all of them), and the manga does offer footnotes about the game's minutiae, you'll have a much deeper appreciation for their plays and strategies if you're already familiar. But prior familiarity isn't necessary for a story as sincere and goodhearted as this one.

This Magic: The Gathering manga injected pure concentrated nostalgia directly into my veins. Set in 1999, this throwback manga is a 1999 verse of “We Didn't Start The Fire” in the making. Its references include Gundam Wing, Final Fantasy 7, Xenogears, X-Japan, and of course, a who's who of an earlier era of Magic's most beloved cards, from Mox Ruby to Fireball to Armageddon. A fun lookback for modern Magic players and '90s kids alike, this manga revels in placing rose-colored glasses over the past. At the same time, it brought back a throwback trope I'd rather have forgotten—focusing on a middle school girl's body and desirability as a love interest—serving as a reminder that this story is nostalgia-bait targeted not at a reader like me, but cis straight men in particular.

I'm so old, I was about the same age as these characters when I started playing Magic: The Gathering in 1997. (Fifth Edition, anyone?) I had a treasured Fireball that I kept (not in a card sleeve, what are those?) in a ziplock bag to protect it. This was the sort of memory that came pouring back to me as protagonist Hajime perfected his black weenie deck: a type of deck that prioritizes small, speedy creature cards. Though he's in a different country, his narrative of bringing Magic cards to school by day while playing Xenogears late into the night, then playing (and losing big time) against adult MTG players in card shops is deeply relatable to me. Then there's Emi, Hajime's seemingly perfect, smart and gorgeous classmate, who also is secretly a Magic: the Gathering fanatic. The focus on Emi's physical proportions, the way she's the only girl in the card shop, and the way even the adults openly crush on her were all far less relatable to me! At least in the '90s, I was always playing Magic against other girls my age. The portrayal here makes me feel like I'm being Othered in my own nostalgia fantasy. It's a reminder that nostalgia is always just that—a fantasy. The “good old days” as I remember them never existed! That's why I don't want to dock too many points for this narrow viewpoint: the author is clearly basing this on his own rose-colored memories, and that gives the story a sense of authenticity.

Another thing that never happened: a premonition that the end of the world would occur in July 1999 (no, I'm not talking about the Y2K bug, which was foretold to occur several months later). These characters live their lives against the backdrop of an impending apocalypse, and based on the type of manga it is, I assume they're somehow going to save the world with the power of card games. But don't worry about it! There's no sense of doom in this first volume, which is mainly concerned with Hajime and Emi growing closer as they continue to reference all your favorite '90s franchises. It's a fun trip down nostalgia lane, but the less you resemble the protagonist, the less successful it will be for you.