Cathy the penguin may be giving up on her love for Orca, and Polar Bear and Seal rush to catch up with her. It’s easy to understand why Polar Bear doesn’t wasn’t Cathy to throw in the towel, but her biggest supporter may be Seal?! Could something be changing in him?!
Well, something’s certainly changing for Polar Bear and Seal: their weight. As in, they gain a lot of weight. Let the dieting struggles begin!
…If Seal can even get past step 1: finding motivation.
It’s been over four years since the last volume of A Polar Bear in Love, and while volume 5 opens with a color page of Polar Bear and Seal frantically trying to find Cathy, the manga then shifts to a flashback about Cathy’s past. So even though the manga seems to thrust readers into a situation they may barely remember, that would-be problem is immediately dismissed.
On Antarctica, Cathy is ostracized due to her attempts to find a partner. Her only friend is a little Adelie penguin named Adelie, and she recounts to him about how she was repeatedly left alone growing up. So her desire to fall in love stems from a desire to have a loving family. Eventually, she meets Orca, and Cathy has pursued him ever since.
Even if you haven’t had life experiences like Cathy’s, her story will strike a chord. I was especially touched by the allegory of some unfortunate children in foster care situations, where the guardians love the idea of a child but bail out when the going gets tough. I want to be clear that I don’t think most foster parents are like this, but children being passed around from one home to another certainly happens more often than we’d like. Plus, Cathy’s last parental figure tells her, “I can’t tell whether you’re male or female and it’s creepy”. I’m sure way too many individuals of the LGBTQ+ community, with androgynous looks, and/or with non-gender-conforming habits can relate to this rejection.
All of this may make up only a small fraction of the story, as the manga soon jumps to her meeting with Orca and then back to the present, but it provides context for Cathy and Orca’s unorthodox relationship and for readers to, like Seal, root for a happy ending for Cathy.
The last third or so of the book is also relatable for anyone who has had issues with their weight. But while Cathy and Orca (and even hints of starting to Seal care for Polar Bear in the same way) was an emotional story propped up by comedy, the weight loss chapters are meant to be full comedy. Seal knows losing weight is a hassle and tries to deny he’s obese or otherwise get out of dieting. Polar Bear is horrified by the fact he can barely hug Seal now, and so he sets out to drop the excess pounds and worries about Seal’s health as well. But the humor just isn’t funny. The manga doesn’t fat-shame or anything (the only one who calls them fat is billed as a mean character), but one of the recurring jokes are the pair hallucinating Cathy is telling them to lose weight. And with the weight gain means the adorable cuteness is replaced with plenty of horror faces about their fate as obese animals. The arc also doesn’t end here, which considering how long this volume took to come out, I think a fresh start for volume 6 was warranted.
Until then, A Polar Bear in Love volume 5 does enough to help fill in the multi-year void thanks to Cathy’s story and seeing hope for interspecies relationships. However, the book is weighed down (pun intended) by its final chapter.