“FX Senshi Kurumi-chan” is a manga themed around foreign exchange margin trading, so-called FX, created by Demunyan (original story) and Tansan Daisuki (art). Looking at the title alone, you might imagine a casual work depicting girls challenging FX. However, what is actually depicted is not only the joy of increasing money, but also the anxiety over losses, the elation when winning, and the dangerous mindset of “I can recover it next time.” Since the story progresses while explaining FX mechanics and terms so that even readers without investment experience can understand, it is easy to grasp the situation the characters are placed in even without prior knowledge, and for that very reason, the terror of the moment the market bares its fangs comes through vividly.

The protagonist, Fukuga Kurumi, has a past inseparable from FX. When she was a middle school student, her mother Kozue lost 20 million yen through FX and ultimately ended her own life. Five years later, the adult Kurumi steps into the world of FX herself with the goal of recovering the 20 million yen her mother lost. It was a challenge that began as revenge against FX, so to speak, but her initial successful trades gradually alter her senses. Driven into a corner, Kurumi even touches her father's 3 million yen, and although she somehow escapes ruin, her father finds out she was trading FX, severely scolds her, and she temporarily steps away from the market. The frightening part of this work is how, even at this point, it makes you feel “Isn't she walking the same path as her mother?”

Having become a college student, Kurumi meets Kogane Mochiko, who is investing, and her friend Yamashi Mebuki. As Mebuki starts FX, Kurumi, an experienced trader, assumes an advisory role, but receiving that advice, Mebuki somehow keeps winning. Seeing someone else's success up close, there is no way the heart of a person once enchanted by the market remains unmoved. In this way, Kurumi herself resumes FX, and four people including Takane Yasuko join the market. However, things are not so sweet that one can keep winning conveniently forever. Mebuki, unable to receive Kurumi's advice anymore, turns around to accumulate losses, losing not only money but also taking on debt, before finally stepping away from FX.

On the other hand, Kurumi accumulates wins through trading, and her goal of recovering the 20 million yen her mother lost draws closer to being within reach rather than a pipedream. And what she chooses for a “certain victory” is EUR/CHF. This part is truly unsettling; while normally seeing a protagonist who keeps winning should bring relief, in this manga, the more profits increase, the more worried you become about whether she will be alright ahead. This is likely because it depicts not only the mindset of a person who has lost trying to win it back, but also the mindset of a winning person deepening their confidence and moving toward an even larger gamble. The dynamic where success itself can become the entrance to the next danger gives the story an intense tension.

What is impressive when reading this work is that rather than using FX simply as a subject matter, it places human emotions swayed by the market at the very center of the story. If a profit is made, a sense of omnipotence is born, if losses expand, composure is lost, and yet the next trading opportunity appears on the screen. This repetition is extremely terrifying. The original author, Demunyan, also has the experience of exhausting savings in overseas FX accounts, and there is a unique realism in the depiction of characters holding large losses. Even though cute characters are merely going through highs and lows, a feeling that makes your stomach ache arises as you read on. That gap is precisely the charm unique to “FX Senshi Kurumi-chan.”

“FX Senshi Kurumi-chan” is a work where you can learn about FX, while at the same time it can be enjoyed as a human drama depicting “why people keep gambling even when knowing it is dangerous.” Kurumi, who was supposed to have started FX to overcome her mother's tragedy, gradually finds herself deeply drawn into it. Looking at her, it becomes unclear whether the enemy is the exchange rate market or her own desires and confidence. Will she win or lose in the next trade, and what lies beyond the goal of 20 million yen? With every turned page, anxiety grows larger than anticipation, making it a work where you can taste a tension like reading a suspense story despite being an investment manga.