Please Save My Earth & Trop Tard: Critical Reviews & Sound Extracts
Two manga series – Saki Hiwatari’s “Please Save My Earth” and Baptiste Delengaigne’s “Trop tard” (Too Late) – are currently attracting critical attention for their distinct approaches to complex themes, according to a France Culture report published Tuesday.
“Please Save My Earth,” originally serialized in Hana to Yume from December 1986 to May 1994 and comprising 21 volumes, has spawned sequels, derivative works and an animated adaptation, establishing Saki Hiwatari as a prominent manga artist. The series centers on Alice, a high school girl with the ability to communicate with plants and animals, whose life is disrupted when she accidentally pushes a classmate, Rin, from a balcony. Rin survives but gains powers of his own, becoming a target alongside two other dreamers, Jinpacho, and Issei.
Critic Pauline Croquet highlighted Hiwatari’s ability to blend adolescent everyday life with cosmic themes. “What is intriguing with Saki Hiwatari is this capacity, which other manga authors also have, to stage both the daily life of adolescents, with the minor worries that one can have, by placing them on a cosmic plane,” Croquet said. “This translates a kind of adolescent vertigo, a time of life when one feels unique, lonely, misunderstood, which induces a form of egocentrism; and at the same time, one realizes how insignificant one is. Please Save My Earth is really the graphic manifestation of this.”
Fausto Fasulo noted the series’ impact on Japanese culture, specifically its exploration of reincarnation and spirituality. “Japan is a country that reacts very strongly to trends. Cyclically, we have waves of manga that are either the result of a trend, or that end up creating one,” Fasulo stated. “What it aroused among its readers is a fascination for the themes of reincarnation, spirituality. These are things already present in Japanese culture but she sensitized her public to it all the more.”
“Trop tard,” released February 6, 2026, by éditions 2042, presents a starkly different narrative. The story follows Claudine, who searches for his cousin Alain and encounters the Mamelukes, a feared gang led by Alain himself. The Mamelukes, while intimidating, are depicted as artists with a political project: to disperse busts of Napoleon throughout France to revive the spirit of conquest.
Croquet described Delengaigne’s work as resembling a Tex Avery cartoon, yet grounded in a disturbing reality. “We gain the impression that all this came out of a Tex Avery cartoon, or these cartoons projected before films in cinemas. There is a somewhat hallucinatory side but we are very close to the truth. That’s what’s disturbing. We are questioned about what we are permeable to, what bothers us in speeches, what we see, what we locate absurd, what we are willing to tolerate. Do we get used to these speeches?”
Fasulo cautioned that the political dimension of “Trop tard” could be overwhelming. “The political dimension can sometimes seem a bit heavy. There is a desire to plunge the reader into the worst meanders of the extreme right’s psyche. On paper, it’s very interesting, but sometimes the reading is asphyxiating because all of Here’s so present, especially through the dialogues. I think it comes from his influences, but also from this toxic thing that exists in these radical monologues that we find on the Internet.”