Story by StarlessNight
Illustrations by KamdZ
Translations by the publisher

Our sixth issue “Just: A Daydream” is preoccupied with fantasy–especially the ones people come up with while under duress, detained, or in despair otherwise. The colon that suspends the statement “just a daydream” is cautiously optimistic. Stopping short of a cynicism that risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, to typify justice as a daydream highlights its necessarily aspirational or unrealized quality. A justice that at present can only exist as a flight of fancy—holding your king accountable! A justice that’s best left aside as a daydream—killing your abuser! What political value can be found in coping passively with disappointment? What common(er) feelings are tapped into by ostensibly escapist media?

And what better way to open the issue than a fantasy comics featuring a politician who, at the end of his young life, wishes for a do-over?

Sanam Ratsadon presents Reincarnate This Time, Could I Build A Better Country? (เกิดใหม่ครั้งนี้ จะสร้างประเทศที่ดีได้หรือเปล่านะ, Palo Publishing, 2020-present), a Thai manga series based on a 2018 trilogy of novels of the same name by StarlessNight, a prolific writer, entrepreneur, and former political prisoner in 2016 under General Prayut’s regime. Already published in English translation in 2022 (with forthcoming Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Korean, and Russian translations!), the first four manga volumes cover the events of the first novel, where the main character’s wish is granted, but via someone else’s body and in a feudal era. Leveraging his modern knowledge and political acumen, the reincarnated one navigates the sociopolitical minefield until—mild spoiler alert—he becomes king.

A stimulating work of the isekai genre with a touch of harem, Reincarnate This Time, Could I Build A Better Country? is also a political thought experiment. How might a modern Siamese kingdom evolve on its own legs? To build a just society for the future, must the retribution of past wrongs be off the table? To this moral dilemma the main character’s pivotal answer is yes.

Incidentally, we have an analogue from recent history. A year after the massacres of Red Shirt protesters in 2010, “Repair Not Revenge” (kae-khai mai kae-khaen) was the slogan under which Yingluck Shinawatra came into power with an electoral landslide. More than a promise of compromise to enemies of the Red Shirts, the slogan represented a policy of justice that can best be captured by a re-translation: “Reparations Without Retribution.”

However, retribution remained a popular desire–on both sides. During Yingluck’s tenure, real strides were made not only towards material remedies to victims but also towards fact-finding and holding high-level perpetrators of the massacres accountable in court. Then, in 2013, the overnight passage of a controversial amnesty bill that would pardon low-level perpetrators as well as nullify the cases brought against Thaksin Shinawatra after the coup in 2006 triggered a wave of criticism and protest from both sides. The protest became the pretext for the military to take over again the following year. The court case against two politician executives of the massacres was dismissed shortly after, interrupting the strides towards accountability, which was rightly feared as a form of retribution. Or consequences, if you’d prefer. Some call it karma.

Since 2023, the slogan’s inverse “Revenge Not Repair” has cropped up in reaction to the Move Forward Party’s potential dissolution by the Constitutional Court. Now that, in August 2024, the dissolution took place, Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat said to let it all explode in the ballots. (Again?!) Is that really how retribution works? Or if this is just another daydream of how justice ought to work, what work can it do? (Help! Get me away from the creeping cynicism!)

As questions percolate, check out the opening chapter of Reincarnate This Time, Could I Build A Better Country? below. To read more, you can purchase the e-books on Amazon. To read the original Thai, purchase hard copies from the publisher’s website or e-books on meb.

Remember to read from the right to the left as you scroll.

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