A dark coming-of-age tale where slice-of-life slices back. This is Punpun Onodera’s coming-of-age story. His parents’ marriage is falling apart. His dad goes to jail, and his mom goes to the hospital. He has to live with his loser uncle. He has a crush on a girl who lives in a weird cult. Punpun tries talking with God about his problems, but God is a jerk. Punpun keeps hoping things will get better, but they really, really don’t. Punpun has finally reunited with the love of his life, Aiko! But she isn’t as exciting and wonderful as he remembered. And she doesn’t make him exciting and wonderful. In fact, he thinks they’re both terribly banal. And now they’ve done something terrible… Punpun, what do you do when there’s no way out? Inio Asano, a bona fide earthling, was born in Ibaraki, Japan, in 1980. In 2001, his short story “Uchu kara Konnichiwa” (Hello from Outer Space) won the first Sunday GX Rookie Prize. Later, GX published his series Subarashii Sekai , available in English from VIZ Media as What a Wonderful World! His other works include Hikari no Machi (City of Light), Nijigahara Holograph and Umibe no Onna no Ko ( A Girl on the Shore ), as well as solanin and Goodnight Punpun , also available from VIZ Media.