Please Save My Earth

Alice Sakaguchi is an Ordinary High School Student and Friend to All Living Things. One day, as she's serving as the Badly-Battered Babysitter to the neighbor's trip-and-a-half of a boy (Rin Kobayashi), she has a chance encounter with the Yaoi Guys from her school class (Issei Nishikori and Jinpachi Ogura), and in the course of the discussion, it comes out that they and other three youngsters (Sakura Kokushou, Daisuke Dobashi, and Haruhiko Kazama) have been having dreams about being alien scientists on the moon studying earth, all in precisely the same continuity.

Eventually, all seven of the scientists at the base are found to have been reincarnated as Japanese teenagers. Their names are: Shion, Mokuren, Enju, Gyokuran, Shusuren, Hiiragi and Shuukaido). Their base — and all its weapons — is still operational, and the seven of them must find a way to balance their obligations from past lives with their new lives on Earth...

Please Save My Earth (ぼくの地球を守って, Boku no Chikyū o Mamotte) is a shōjo science fiction manga by Saki Hiwatari. It was published by Hakusensha from 1987 to 1994 in Hana to Yume and collected in 21 tankōbon volumes. The series was adapted as a six-part anime original video animation in 1993. It has sequel Embraced by the Moonlight (ボクを包む月の光, Boku o Tsutsumu Tsuki no Hikari), also published in Hana to Yume from 2003 to 2014; and Embraced itself has its own sequel, I Sing with the Earth (ぼくは地球と歌う, Boku wa Chikyū to Utau), which has been running in HtY from 2015.

Tropes used in Please Save My Earth include:

• Adrenaline Makeover: Alice.
• Adults Are Useless: Averted for the aliens, basically because they are adults. On Earth, however... there is just Tamura knowing what's going on and helping the kids.
• After-Action Villain Analysis
• All for Nothing: First off, we discover that Rin actually was trying to destroy the moonbase all along, not use its power to take over the Earth. What's more, we discover that he wants to destroy it because he remembers that Shion built some device on the moonbase and left it running. However, Rin can't remember what the device does, because Shion had already gone insane by the time he built it. Rin suspects it is some sort of doomsday device, and he wants to destroy the base to get rid of it. However in the end it turns out that the device was essentially a tape-recorder, playing an eternal loop of Mokuren's song; causing all the plants in the base to grow erratically and essentially destroy everything in the base. Ooops. Better apologize to Daisuke's brother for trying to drown him.
• All Planets Are Earthlike
• And Then What?: Tried with Rin, in order to show him the insanity of his plan.
• Angst Coma: Rin and Alice have one.
• Apocalypse How: Class X-2, for the aliens.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best In People: Subverted.
• Arc Words
• Art Evolution: And how!
• Aspect Montage
• At Least I Admit It: Shion says this to Gyokuran. And to everyone else.
• The Atoner: Haruhiko.
• Ax Crazy: Rin/Shion.
• Babies Ever After: The manga ends with Tamura and Ayako with a toddler boy and a baby girl, and with Rin's mother pregnant. In the sequel the main characters are Ren (son of Rin and Alice) and Kachiko (Mikuro's daughter), plus Sakura is finally pregnant.
• Backstory
• Badass Normal: Tamura is not the only one without ESP, but he's the most useful.
• Badass Pacifist: Alice.
• Badly-Battered Babysitter (Alice starts as this. Turns out Rin is, well, NOT really special in the way she expected.)
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Shion and Mokuren. And when they admit to themselves their feelings, they just Cannot Spit It Out.
• Berserk Button: Don't hurt Alice in front of Jinpachi. Also don't disparage Shion's past in front of Rin. And if you're Haruhiko, a.k.a. Shukaido, you basically are Shion/Rin's Berserk Button.
• Beta Couple: Tamura and Ayako.
• Big Brother Instinct: Tamura feels this way regarding Haruhiko. Hajime, despite being the younger sibling, is very protective of Alice.
• Big Damn Heroes: How Mikuro saves Tamura and Haruhiko from Majima.
• Break the Cutie: Alice, but she gets better.
  • Mokuren and Enju.
    • Kill the Cutie
• Break the Haughty: Shion.
• Brilliant but Lazy: Apparently both Shion and Rin. Shion has top grades without even trying, and while Rin is confirmed to be a Child Prodigy, he's a normal kid (until Shion's memories awake).
• Broken Ace: Shion: he's good-looking, a genius, and has a incredibly powerful sarces. He's also so broken that he believes himself unable to love or care for anyone, and that he will never be able to be part of a family or happy because of his issues.
• Broken Pedestal: Alice seems to idealize Shion, then it becomes clear that he's up to no good and the others tell her what a jerk he was.
• The Chains of Commanding: Hiiragi, to the point that even his reincarnation (Daisuke) feels bad for the choices made on the Moon.
• Character Focus: Especially Mokuren, Shion, Rin and Alice.
• Chekhov's Gun: The videotape with Mokuren singing is crucial in the end as Shion made it play over and over again, leading the plants to destroy everything in the moon's base.
• Cherry Blossoms (their appearance out of season is a plot point)
• The Chessmaster: Rin/Shion.
• The Chick: Alice.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Rin.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Shion, but the costant conflict with authority doesn't end well: first he was selected (exiled) to go to study Earth by the government; then the other scientists isolate him. Mokuren has shades too.
• Corruption by a Minor
• Costume Porn: Kiches' official outfits definitely qualify.
• Creepy Child: Rin, after awaking from his coma.
• Cry for the Devil: It's hard to not feel sorry for Shion after seeing all the crap he's gone through.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Shion: he was born on a battlefield, was forced to kill in self defence and everyone he loves dies.
• Dead Little Brother: Tamura's younger brother
• Death Is a Sad Thing
• Debut Queue
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Mokuren's parents, especially her father, qualify. La Zlo too, as Shion (and Rin) is strongly influenced by his words, despite La Zlo only being Shion's adoptive father and they lived together for a mere 78 days.
• Deliberately Cute Child: Rin.
• Despair Event Horizon: Shukaido reachs his when he discovers he's already ill and can't take the vaccine.
  • Apparently Rin reachs his when his mother finally broke and told him he is not her son.
  • The scientists manage to have two of them: first their planet is destroyed, then a lethal virus appears on the base and kill them all.
• Determinator - Plucky Girl: Mokuren.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Alice gets together with Rin, not Jinpachi.
• Die or Fly: Jinpachi when he falls from Tokyo Tower with an unconscious Rin, and Alice too when she has to destroy a psychic barrier.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Mokuren dies in Shion's arms.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Shukaido vaccinates only Shion against a lethal virus, without telling him, forcing him to see his beloved die and to remain stranded alone on the Moon (their home planet was destroyed during a war) for nine years. The reason? Mokuren loves him even if Shion is an ass and a bundle of emotional issues with legs who even comes to rape her.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Shion can hold grudge forever if he thinks you're pitying him. Just ask Gyokuran.
• Doomed Hometown: more like doomed homeplanet...
• Double Consciousness: All the reincarnated characters have problems putting a line between the present and the past: Issei falls in love with Jinpachi due to Enju's feelings for Gyokuran; Alice is so scared by the possibility that she ends up blocking the memories; and Rin, being only eight, is slowly being absorbed by Shion's personality.
• Driven to Suicide: Haruhiko.
• Driven to Villainy: Rin and Shion couldn't control the chain of events which led them to became the villains.
• Dying Alone: Shion's fate.
• Dysfunction Junction
• Earn Your Happy Ending
• Easily Forgiven: Rin lied to everyone, mind raped one of the heroes to the point he tried to kill himself, send another one to the hospital, blackmailed people to obtain what he needed, kidnapped the girl and tried to Take Over the World. Don't worry, Rin, it's all okay now. Slightly averted in the sequel where Shion is considered unpredictable and somewhat dangerous, but not evil.
• Energy Ball: Every fight with ESP seems to involve this.
• Enfante Terrible: Rin.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Rin tries really hard to shield his mother from what's goingo on. It doesn't work.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Shion: stuck on the Moon, completely alone, surrounded by the corpses of his coworkers and the woman he loves, for nine years. No wonder he ends up insane. Oh, and it was someone he trusted that inflicted this on him.
• Fighting From the Inside: Rin find himself with the desires, personality, and memories of a fully grown man in his head, and considering that his and Shion's goals are opposites, here we go.
• Foe Yay: Majima is obsessed about having Mikuro on his side, and forces him to kiss his foot.
  • Shion says that he hates Shukaido so much that when in front of him he feels like a girl in love.
• Freudian Excuse
• Friend to All Children: Tamura.
• Friend to All Living Things: Alice
• Friendship Moment: Shion cries alone in front of Gyokuran's coffin.
• Fridge Logic Okay, so we know the moonbase it continually resupplied by drones clandestinely sent to Earth. This must also be where they get the manga they're reading from.... but their race is only the size of a human's thumb. Are the drones shrinking the manga for them?
  • And what exactly were they going to do if they'd evacuated to Earth like Shion wanted? Hook up with The Littles?
• Futureshadowing: It's very, very confusing: Mokuren faints on the Moon and sees Rin falling from the balcony. And she somehow manages to save him.
• Gender Bender: After Reincarnation. Enju, a woman, wished to be reborn a male, so that she could stay close to Gyokuran in the next life without that messy romance stuff getting in the way. It worked... but not in the way she expected: she became Issei... and Gyokuran became Jinpachi, another male.
• Girl Next Door: Every female character except Mokuren.
• Go Mad From the Isolation: Shion.
• Godiva Hair: Mokuren.
• Gory Discretion Shot: We never see how Shion kills those soldiers that tried to kill him on Tes.
• Green Aesop: The title and overall plot refers to this. The Moral goes something like this - "Take care of your planet while you have it, cause you Earth-people still have a chance at redemption. Unlike us, Space Scientists whose home space-faring civilization self-destructed in war."
• Green Thumb: Mokuren can make plants grow or wither faster than normal with her singing. Not as lame as it sounds. See Lethal Harmless Superpower entry below.
• Hair of Gold: Mokuren.
• Happily Adopted: Shion was healing, after being adopted by La Zlo. Unfortunately La Zlo died after 78 days in a car accident while Shion was at school. Mikuro too is adopted.
• Heroic BSOD: Alice has one when she remembers that Shion didn't love Mokuren (not true, but Mokuren believed that). All the scientists have one when their whole solar system gets destroyed in the war.
• Heterosexual Life Partners:
  • Enju and Shusuran, to the point that they became Platonic Life Partners on Earth (until Issei and Sakura fall in love and start dating).
  • Issei and Jinpachi, especially after Issei manages to let go of Enju's love for Gyokuran.
• Hidden Agenda Villain
• Ho Yay / Foe Yay: Shion is obsessed with Gyokuran. All the girls noticed and say that Shion must be in love with him.
• Human Aliens: The aliens look exactly like humans. They're just really small.
• I Am Who?
• I Can't Believe I'm Saying This: Basically Mokuren's thought when she declares herself to be engaged to Shion, and that she consented when they had sex.
• I Gave My Word: Why Shion didn't kill himself on the Moon after Mokuren's death.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: In the end, this was Shion greatest desire. Then it got worse.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Mokuren and Alice.
• Ill Boy: Haruhiko. He has a weak heart because he abused his sarches. Using sarches is not good for your health.
• Innocence Lost: Shion and Rin.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Tamura and Haruhiko. Everyone and Rin.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
• I Will Protect Her
• Invisible Parents: We just see Alice's family and Rin, Haruhiko and Mikuro's mothers. Oh, and Mokuren's parents.
• It Got Worse: For the the scientists on the Moon. And for the kids on Earth too.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind
• The Kid with the Remote Control: With Tokyo Tower as the remote!
• Lethal Harmless Powers: The kiches make plants grow by singing. They can also kill them. All of them, and they actually did, in the past. The effects were so devasting that they killed themeself out of shame (which is why kiches are so rare).
  • Not to mention that plants growing out of control overnight is pretty scary too. And if you live in a space station with nothin' but vacuum outside...
• Literal Cliff Hanger: At the Tokyo Tower. Rin and Jinpachi are very lucky that Jinpachi managed to teleport.
• Loads and Loads of Characters
• Long Hair Is Feminine
• Loudspeaker Truck
• Love Epiphany: The ones we see: Issei realizes his love for Jinpachi, and Mokuren realizes she's fallen in love with Shion.
• Love Hurts
• Love Triangle: Issei-Jinpachi-Alice (Type 5); Enju-Gyokuran-Mokuren (Type 5); Shion-Mokuren-Gyokuran (initially sort of 7 'cause Mokuren is unsure of her feelings, then type 4)
• Mama Bear: Mrs. Yakushimaru is a nice woman, but if she suspects you're a menace to her son Mikuro, she will tear you apart with words.
• Manipulative Bastard: Rin/Shion, however he starts to relies more and more on his powers as he became more unstable due to the struggle between Rin's and Shion's egos.
• Manly Tears: Haruhiko cries quite a lot. Takashi too, but out of fear, which makes him unmanly.
• May-December Romance: Alice is nine years older than Rin.
• Mega Neko: Averted in the case of Kyaa. Although he is large in comparison to the scientist's species, to a human he'd be the size of a house cat.
• Mercy Kill: Averted: Mokuren tries to kill Shion so he will not be alone in the universe, but she can not do it.
• The Messiah
• Monumental Battle
• My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad: Sev Oru thinks this about his father and Mokuren's father. After the discussion, Mokuren resolves to not speak of her father so nobody will make fun of him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Haruhiko when he remembers what Shukaido had done to Shion.
• Names to Know In Anime: Both scientists and humans have very famous seiyuus:
  • Scientists: Show Hayami (Shion), Emi Shinohara (Mokuren), Yasunori Matsumoto (Shuukaido), Yoshino Takamori (Enju), Naoko Matsui (Shusuren), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Gyokuran), Nobuo Tobita (Hiiragi)
  • Humans: Yumi Touma (Rin), Yuri Shiratori (Alice, Kappei Yamaguchi (Haruhiko, Ryotaro Okiayu (Issei), Naoko Matsui (Shusuren), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Jinpachi), Nobuo Tobita (Daisuke), Jurota Kosugi (Tamura), Yuko Kobayashi (Ayako), Nozomu Sasaki (Hajime), Ryo Horikawa (Hokuto), Toshihiko Seki (Mikuro).
• No Export for You: You didn't know there was a sequel? That's being written as we speak? That's already 8 volumes long?
• Now It's My Turn: Mikuro during his battle with Rin.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: Rin is eight years old.
• Oracular Urchin
• Ordinary High School Student
• Parental Abandonment: Especially for the aliens: all the Kiches are given up by their parents to the Government (Mokuren's father also died); Shion is a war orphan and his adoptive father died in an accident. Rin's mother freaks out about Rin's personality changes and tells him he's not her son, leading him to run away. Mikuro's biological mother refused him because of his powers when he was five years old.
• Parental Substitute: Lian Mode to Mokuren.
• The Plague: It kills the seven scientists on the Moon.
• Please Don't Leave Me
• Psychic Powers: The sarches and kiches. Sarches is like ESP, while kiches makes it possible to talk with plants and make them grow.
• Put on a Bus: Takashi.
• Rape as Drama / Rape Is Love: Subverted? The concept is used for Big Drama in this series. However what actually happened between Shion and Mokuren is moot as everyone is an Unreliable Narrator due to unclear memories heavily influenced by emotions. See YMMV section for details.
• Rapunzel Hair: Mokuren; Alice; Ayako and Shion after years on the Moon.
• Recurring Dreams
• Reincarnation: All the moon characters died and reincarnated.
• Refusal of the Call
• Reincarnation Romance
• The Resenter: Shion is this regarding everyone, but especially Gyokuran and Mokuren.
• Rival Turned Evil
• The Runaway: Rin and Alice.
• Sadistic Choice: Rin/Shion does this to Daisuke: if Daisuke doesn't give him the code, he will drown Daisuke's brother.
• Saintly Church: We don't know about the rules of the aliens' church, but the representatives we see are kind and lovely people.
• Save the Villain: Basically they end having to save Rin from Shion's influence and Shion from himself.
• Shower of Angst: Mokuren after Shino rapes her.
• Shrinking Violet: Alice was one in the first volume. She remains a shy and quiet girl, but she get better.
• Sympathy for the Devil: There's a reason everyone wants to save both Rin and Shion.
• Take Over the World: To Shion this is the only way to stop humans from destroying the Earth.
• Talking to Plants
• Tears of Remorse: Almost everyone.
• Theme Naming: All the moon characters have names that mean plants or flowers:
  • Shion=aster, Shukaido=begonia, Enju=pagoda tree, Hiiragi=false holly, Gyokuran and Mokuren=types of magnolia.
    • The names are also Meaningful Names, since the symbols match their personalities.
    • Also Floral Theme Naming
• Together in Death
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe
• Tokyo Tower
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Shusuran (tomboy) and Enju (girly girl); Alice (girly girl) and Sakura (tomboy).
• Trauma Conga Line: Shion's whole life.
• Unreliable Narrator: Everyone, due to unclear memories heavily influenced by emotions. They also often state things as fact when they don't actually know the full story, while believing their own statement. (Y'know, like Real People do) Biggest Example: "Shion raped Mokuren" turns out to be way more complicated than those 3 words, Also Mega Spoiler: "Shion wants to destroy the Earth" turns out to be completely off the mark. Especially interesting because Rin also believes this. You would think that would be reliable since he shares Shion's memories, but no.
• Villainous BSOD
• Virgin Power: The Kiches.
• Visions of Another Self
• Yakuza: Rin manipulates Majima (yakuza) to render Tamura (former yakuza) harmless, and to kidnap Alice. Dr. Mori also has connections with the yakuza.
• Yaoi Guys: Issei is in love with Jinpachi. And Jinpachi is in love with Alice, which makes this a type 5 Love Triangle.
• You Can't Go Home Again: It's been destroyed.
• War Is Hell: The main reason behind Shion's emotional problems, and the reason of his whole plan.
• Warrior Therapist: Subverted, as Tamura, Haruhiko and Mikuro try with Rin and fail.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Shion/Rin.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Haruhiko gets a big one from Jinpachi, when he reveals that Shukaido only inoculated Shion against the virus that was killing them, forcing him to live alone for nine years.
• Where Are They Now? Epilogue
• Whole-Episode Flashback: All the aliens' story is in flashbacks.
• Willfully Weak: Gyokuran wears a device that suppress part of his powers.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The heroes biggest problem? Rin is eight years old. They don't want to hurt him and when they do, they feel horrible.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Haruhiko pretends to faint while chasing Alice so she will stops running away. Considering that he has a really weak heart it works.