Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, Vol. 1 (Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction #1)

Asano's twelve-volume sci-fi slice-of-life manga captures the desperate nihilism of life under late capitalism better than most anything I've read. It also offsets its dismal worldbuilding with a funny, touching, and very believable depiction of friendship between teen girls. As Kadode and Ouran graduate high school, plan their careers (or don't), and stumble through first loves, Tokyo keeps moving around them, even in the shadow of the Mother Ship parked in the sky overhead. Every military escalation against the apparently defenseless invaders quickly becomes part of Kadode's, and everyone else's, new normal, and Asano depicts these rapidly adapting norms with black humor rooted in keen observations of consumer culture. I was both consoled and unnerved to recognize many of the uglier emotions aroused in the young protagonists, who often wish for a full and final destruction rather than a propagation of the status quo. The end of a civilization is like this, Asano tells us: slow, so painstakingly slow, until all of a sudden, it's not.