Right when I started reading volume 5, I was a bit at sea. It had been long enough that I’d forgotten exactly where we were in the story. Though it hadn’t been much longer than a week. I would’ve really loved a recap right at the beginning, which I swear was in volumes 2, 3, and 4. But there was no recap for 5 or 6.

So we’re at a big climax and things are happening in several different places to several different characters. We learn more about the dragon men or dragon tamers or dragons. The bad guys are successful in some things, and are thwarted in others.

Oh, and then one of the good characters has to do something really gross! I wonder if it tasted like chicken or pork.

The manga had a satisfying conclusion. It wasn’t all sweetness and light, of course. The fate of some characters is not, perhaps, what we might have wished. I will spoil insofar as to say.. I totally expected it to end with a wedding. Don’t these things usually end with weddings?

You know, I almost want this to be longer, or in a different form. Maybe a longish anime series, or a prose novel. Just so we could spend more time with the characters and explore little side stories. I feel like they should have had a chance to have more adventures on their quest. They could’ve actually used up the full 2 years allotted to them for one thing!

But, yea, no, it’s good. Not the best manga I’ve ever read. It doesn’t make me squee. But it’s a solid 3.5 or 4 out of 5.

My Thoughts
It’s pretty much impossible to discuss the events of the final two volumes of the series without massive spoilers, so if you’re reading, consider yourself warned.

Volume 5 picks up where volume four ended — the day of the summer solstice, which is to be the day of reckoning for many people. The five candidates for ruler are about as distant from one another as possible — through various means, the dragon men Ceianus and Gaius appear to have been directing each of the candidates to the location of a different “invisible tower” with the promise that there they’ll find the Key to the Kingdom they’ve been seeking.

Asta has already learned that the mysterious “Key” is a fiction created years ago by Sith Master King of the Dragon Tamers Klavis Draconia and his apprentice Darth Dahres. Five underground towers were created, and at the bottom a pool awaits the arrival of a human sacrifice with royal blood. He and Asloan (separately) now learn once all five towers have their proper keys, Draconia expects to acquire ultimate power and domination over the world.

In the meantime, a number of events have been set in motion. Some by Draconia, some by the dragons, and some by other players in the land. Letty and Asloan both escape their towers without becoming keys, foiling the completion of Draconia’s number one plot. Badd, mortally injured in a fight with Draconia, finds himself called to fulfill the promise he made to Gaius earlier on and surrenders his body to the dragons. And Asta, finding himself on the spot when the troops of neighboring Certes decide to take advantage of the chaos in Landor and attempt an invasion, must find it in himself to protect his land and his people.

Since this book really is ultimately about Asta’s growth from a scared and confused little kid into a young man who will be able to take the throne and rule in a reasonable fashion, it’s not surprising that the majority of our time in the last two volumes is spent dealing with his development. We get a little bit of growth from Letty (and none from Asloan, who already started out perfect) but the focus is Astarion and that’s really as it should be.

The ultimate end, which I won’t spoil, is bittersweet, but fitting. My biggest gripe is that the wrap up was unsatisfactory to me — if you’re going to start by giving a timeline of events following these climactic battles, then you darn well ought to include some information about the rest of our named characters. Just concluding the main story isn’t enough when you have all these extra threads hanging out! But I can say the main story did have a solid end that felt like a conclusion rather than just trailing off as some other manga have done.

In Short
I can see that the author completed the story that she wanted to tell — the story of the relationship between Badd and Asta, and the development of Asta into a young man who has confidence in himself and his leadership abilities. She was successful in this, and it was very well done. But I was still a little disappointed that we didn’t get a fuller sketch of Asta’s life and the lives of the other main characters at the end. It was too quickly skimmed over. All the same, the series was definitely better than average.

It occurred to me while reading and watching that Japanese anime and manga won’t be the same again. What’s happened there and is still going on is one of those culture-changing events. I’m sure the anime and manga will still be brilliant, but it’ll be different. Different how, I don’t know. The perspective of time is the only thing that’ll tell us that.

If you want to donate, you know where to do it. But also just take a little time this week to realize/remember how awesome Japan and Japanese creators are.

The Key to the Kingdom is interesting in that it’s a more traditional Western fantasy story. King dies, throne is up for grabs. So the young prince and a bunch of other contenders for the throne go on separate quests to try to find the ‘key to the kingdom’. And, of course, there’s dragons!

Landor is in the middle of a war, which some would term a civil war, to try to unite the neighboring lands that were once part of it. So when the king dies, they rather have to put up a strong front, or their enemies will take advantage. So when the young prince (the older prince and heir also died) says, no way, I don’t want it, they’re all kind of stuck. Not that they really wanted a 13 year old who can’t hold a sword to be king, but you sort of need someone, don’t you? So the council or whatever decides to make it a 2-year quest. Whoever finds the magical, rumored key to the kingdom — as long as they’re of royal blood, of course! — will get to be king. Or queen. And if the two years expires with no one finding it, then the prince will take over. Presumably older and wiser.

This bit I had trouble with. Are those neighboring countries just going to sit back while half the nobility is off gallavanting around? Or wouldn’t they take advantage of the lack of ruler for TWO YEARS and invade and cause general havoc? But no one seems concerned about this.

So Prince Asta sets off with swordsman Baddass and he’s off to go to a place his older brother, the heir apparent, told him to go to. Rather than specifically seeking out the key. Though he stops in at a library and whatnot on the way. And childhood friend and girl is also off having her own adventures and trying to become queen.

And then there’s dragon men. Or dragon tamers. Or dragon speakers. Or actual dragons. It’s all a little confusing. And probably meant to be. These guys are plotting, but are they plotting to help someone find the key? Or to bring down the entire kingdom? Or are both those things the same thing?

I like most of the characters. I also liked that Prince Asta, though people call him a spoiled little prince, is only kind of that. He doesn’t whine his way about the countryside. He’s not naive and ignorant. He just isn’t much for holding a sword and going into battles. And he is only 13!

The end of volume 4 seems to bring us to the point of the climax. I haven’t yet read the final volumes. Hopefully it will all come together satisfactorily.

The artwork is shoujo and pretty. Since it’s a fantasy world, the mangaka can really play with clothing and jewelry and hair and all of that. I wish there were more color pictures.

I have 2 quibbles with the translation. One, it seems the translator was going for the sort of pseudo-British, pseudo-medieval, fantasy-ish kind of language. And I found it distracting, especially at first. I think less would’ve been more in this case. Just a flavor of the language is fine. (Then again, maybe the heavyhandedness of it was present in the original and thus it’s a truer translation.)

I also noticed some copyeditting problems. You know: it’s instead of its. All ready instead of already. Noticed that more in the first two volumes.

One word to CMX: Your promos for other manga in the back? Not doing it for me. I don’t really care if SoandSo is going to hook up with SoandSo in Volume 6 of Manga Y, if I don’t even know what Manga Y is about! I think it would be more effective if you gave a summary of the manga in general, not the specific volume.

I would like to see this as an anime. I think the dragon men in particular would be very pretty in action. And I bet the music would be cool too.

To summarize the general premise, during the Bakumatsu era a skilled young swordsman named Himura Kenshin fought on the side of the ishin shishi (pro-Emperor) patriots and earned the nickname hitokiri battōsai (essentially: a manslayer who has mastered the art of battōjutsu) before vanishing and becoming a figure of legend. While many of the ishin shishi eventually took up powerful positions in the new Meiji government, Kenshin was not interested in profiting thus from his actions, since he had fought only with the aim of providing a more peaceful future for Japan’s people. Instead, he becomes an unassuming rurouni (wandering samurai) and wields his sakabatō (a reverse-blade katana nearly incapable of killing) on behalf of those needing his help.

Before commencing this reread, my recollection was that Rurouni Kenshin gets good in volume seven, when one of Kenshin’s old enemies (the awesome Saitō Hajime from the pro-Shogunate Shinsengumi) pays him a visit. It turns out, though, that that’s not exactly true, since the first two volumes are very good.

The story begins in Tokyo during the eleventh year of the Meiji era (1879 or thereabouts). As he travels through the city, Kenshin is accosted by Kamiya Kaoru, the feisty instructor of Kamiya Kasshin-ryÅ« (a school of swordsmanship that emphasizes non-lethal techniques), who is searching for the murderer who has tarnished the name of her school (and driven away its students) by claiming to be one of its devotees. Kenshin helps out, since this fellow is also claiming to be the hitokiri battōsai, and during the course of events, Kaoru discovers some of his violent past. Still, she asks him to stay, saying, “I don’t care who you used to be!” He agrees to stay put a while and moves into the dojo.

Like any good shounen series, our hero needs a band of friends, so volume two sets about fulfilling that requirement. The first addition to the cast is Myōjin Yahiko, an orphaned boy of samurai lineage who has been forced to steal in order to survive. He becomes Kaoru’s first student, and though somewhat obnoxious at first, he matures a lot in a short time, especially after he gets confirmation that all the training is paying off. Next is Sagara Sanosuke, “the fight merchant,” who was once a member of a civilian army that was betrayed by the ishin shishi. He has been hired to fight Kenshin, but realizes the rurouni is different from the other, corrupt patriots and ends up becoming his right-hand man.

In addition, much is made during these first two volumes about the Meiji government not delivering on many of its promises. Watsuki also works on building the relationship between Kenshin and Kaoru, showing the former contentedly helping out with the chores and the latter putting herself at risk when Kenshin is challenged by another former hitokiri simply because she’d rather be in danger than be alone again. It’s significant that when the battle triggers Kenshin’s battōsai mode, Kaoru is the one who prevents him from killing his opponent, for which Kenshin is profoundly grateful.

Volumes three and four are not quite as good, but close. I just can’t summon much interest in Takani Megumi, a woman from a long line of doctors who was coerced into making opium for a greedy industrialist, and she frustrates me by attempting to take her own life after Kenshin and Sanosuke have weathered some tough fights attempting to rescue her. Still, the introduction of Shinomori Aoshi, a former guard of Edo castle who is bitter about not seeing any fighting during the war, is significant, and the fates of his less-able-to-move-on-with-their-lives companions are compelling.

Where the story really sags, though, is in volumes five and six. Watsuki’s sidebars are full of comments like he can’t believe the series is still ongoing, how much work it is, and how certain stories were written “during a period of extreme exhaustion.” I must say that it shows. First, Yahiko defends a young girl named Tsubame against some dudes who are making her an accomplice to a burglary. Then a swordsman tries to recruit Kenshin to the cause of reviving a more lethal version of “the Japanese art of swords.” Lastly, Sano encounters a former comrade from his army days and must decide whether to participate in his anti-government plans. Zzz. Volume six, in particular, was a bit of a slog to get through.

Artistically, Watsuki’s style is attractive, featuring quite a few bishounen characters (somewhat to his apparent dismay, this results in a lot of female fans) as well as bizarre-looking ones. It takes a few volumes for the characters’ looks to settle down, and sometimes the metamorphosis is even faster (Aoshi looks a good bit different even just two chapters after his original appearance, though he’s still immediately recognizable.) One thing I find slightly weird is how often Watsuki openly admits to borrowing character designs from other sources (though in at least one case he specifies that he had the original artist’s permission to do so). Tsubame, for example, appears to be an exact replica of Tomoe Hotaru from Sailor Moon.

So, to sum up… Kenshin starts strong, but gradually falters, culminating in the rather boring volumes five and six. Take heart, though, because if memory serves, volume seven is truly fabulous, and sets off the Kyoto arc, which most Kenshin fans will probably name as their favorite part of the series. I’ll be reviewing the first half of it next time, so watch this space!

My Thoughts
After the death of his father and his brother, Prince Astarion, the next heir to the throne, refuses to take over or to allow a regency to be established in his name (he’s 12 or 13 as the story opens.) Rather than settle immediately upon another claimant and possibly spark a civil war, the King’s council wisely decides to organize a sort of contest: all eligible parties (aka those with some sort of blood claim to the throne, however distant) may undertake a quest for the artifact known as the “Key to the Kingdom”. Anyone who finds it within two years will win the kingdom. If no one finds it within the time frame, then the throne will revert to Prince Astarion whether he likes it or not.

Asta finds himself among the candidates, however reluctantly, and he sets off with his brother’s friend Baddorius to see if he can figure out just what this mysterious item actually is. The reader follows their progress, with intermittant updates on Letty (the only female candidate, and Asta’s friend/crush) and later Asloan Fairheart, candidate number 5.

With all of these characters and quite a few mysteries set up, I admit to feeling some concern: this is, after all, only a six volume series, and while 1000-ish pages is quite a decent length for a plain old prose trilogy, it’s actually not a whole lot of manga real estate in which to tell a complex story.

But we get right into the thick of things: the first couple of volumes serve very well to introduce the main characters and the present situation. And once the reader has a handle on the basic setting, the author wastes no time in delving into the history of the kingdoms and revealing quite a bit more about what’s actually going on.

It becomes clear very early on that the day of the summer solstice is going to be key, and the various players spend a span of several months getting into place for what will happen on that date. Volume four comes to a close as that day is dawning, leaving the reader to anticipate what’s going to happen next.

Thus far, the series has impressed me with its pacing. Not only has mangaka Kyoko Shitou resisted the temptation to overly complicate her plot, she’s also doling out important information a little bit at a time, rather than trying to keep it all until the end. I really feel like there’s enough time left for the major points to be resolved, and resolved well.

The characterization has also been good — in fact, I like Asta a lot more than I thought I was going to at the start, and I’ve been extremely pleased by the lack of stupidity shown by quite a lot of the characters. For the most part they seem like alert people who aren’t likely to fall prey to annoying plots like not passing on a vital bit of information for no good reason, or drawing entirely the wrong conclusion about something and acting a fool as a result.

Hopefully the final two volumes will continue these positive trends and bring us to a satisfactory conclusion of the story.

In Short
Mangaka Kyoko Shitou has created an imaginitive pseudo-medieval setting for her fantasy manga The Key to the Kingdom. The first two-thirds of the series is spent setting up the principle players and maneuvering them into place for the climax to come in the final two volumes. It does its job: enough is revealed to the reader to make one interested in the fates of the characters and the ultimate answers to the mysteries not yet solved.

The environmental terrorists become a more important factor in volume two. Hachimaki, who has been somewhat of a slacker up until now, learns that a rich inventor is mounting an expedition to Jupiter. Hachimaki develops a single-minded determination to be on the Jupiter mission, which leads to him working out endlessly and being sort of an ass to Tanabe, the (female) newcomer to the crew set to be his replacement. The environmental group—the Space Defense League—attempts several times to sabotage the protect, since the purpose of the mission to Jupiter is not exploration but to mine its resources. Hachimaki isnâ€t particular about the reasons—he just wants to go—and when his former friend, Hakim is revealed to be the terrorist mastermind, Hachimaki nearly kills him, saved at the last minute by Tanabe.

Hachimaki makes the crew for the Jupiter mission and by volume three is participating in mission training simulations. Heâ€s haggard, though, losing weight, having visions of some sort of mystical cat, and feeling disconnected from everything around him. His crewmate, Sally, attempts to get through to him, and eventually succeeds (via boob therapy). Hachimaki has spent a great deal of time pursuing solitude, but Sally makes him see that in the end that Tanabe was right all along—“space is too dangerous and wonderful a thing to face alone.” Like his father before him, Hachimaki marries before heading out into space in order to anchor himself with a home.

Planetes is definitely an interesting tale, offering a mixture of science fiction and philosophizing about what it means for humans to go into space. One might notice, though, that in each of the paragraphs above dedicated to a particular volume of the series, Hachimaki seems like a different person. And, indeed, an inability to identify with the lead is what prevented me from awarding these volumes an “A.”

These volumes take place between 2074 and 2077, and it makes sense that a person could change a great deal in that time, especially given what Hachimaki has experienced, but sometimes I couldnâ€t trace the path between one incarnation of Hachimaki and the next or fully buy into his feelings for Tanabe. Also, even though it would have been unfortunate if Hachimaki had remained on the debris-collecting crew forever, I really missed Yuri and Fee as the story moved away from them. The first volume may be the most episodic of the first three, but itâ€s also a little less heavy than the others.

Ultimately, I liked Planetes a lot, though it wasnâ€t a quick read for me. Iâ€m looking forward to the fourth and final volume.

Planetes is published in English by TOKYOPOP. There are technically five books in this series, but the last two comprise volume four, which was split due to length.

My Thoughts
Ugh. These last two volumes are a real let down even compared with the averageness of the first three. At least 1-3 had a sort of cohesiveness — they were tied together by the thread of Hachimaki’s quest to join the Jupiter team and his journey to make it. But all that goes out the window for these last two volumes (which are clearly only one volume, padded out by extra materials to make two. For more profit? Who knows.)

Volume 4.1 takes place some time after the prior volume. Hachimaki and Tanabe were married and he has left on his mission to Jupiter. But we see none of this, because it all happened off camera. Instead, the whole of the manga portion of this volume is taken up by a nearly incoherent story starring Fee and to a lesser extent, Yuri and Tanabe. (Very much lesser.)

We start with Tanabe, who makes friends with a Tek Jansen looking dude who claims he’s an alien who’s been punished for his bad behavior by being made into a human. She tries to help him make some friends. And that… is the end of that story. I was pretty confused, because it seemed like it was leading somewhere, but then the whole thing was abruptly dropped. We see the guy again, briefly, but his alien nature (or lack thereof) receives no further discussion.

We move quickly on to the next issue. Apparently, the space around Earth is mined, and the garbage collectors are (naturally) not allowed to collect these mines and must leave them floating there. Now, all of these mines belong to different nation states down below, and are there just in case. Though this is poorly explained, one has to assume there’s some new sort of cold war and philosophy of mutually assured destruction which forms the political backdrop of how this situation developed.

We see some bickering between military types, one of whom is named Colonel Sanders and yes, looks exactly like Colonel Sanders. There’s even a fried chicken joke. I’m not sure if it’s the translation or the original writing that makes this section unclear. But apparently, even though there is a 100% probability that using the space mines will create a debris field that will pretty much cut Earth off from space, two countries (The US and some… very vaguely named Republic. China? A coalition of Arab states? Never explained) have decided to screw everyone and escalate tensions to the point where blowing stuff up seems like the only option.

Meanwhile, Fee is visiting her family, and her son, whose father apparently is incapable of training or disciplining him, has a bunch of unruly dogs living in their small apartment. The neighbors are unhappy. But even though she knows the dogs should be trained, Fee cannot stand up to the power of sad looking puppies and children and gives up on the whole business. Somehow this gives her an epiphany that children rail against that which ‘does not make sense’ rather than accepting it and so she goes off to try and stop the debris field from cutting off the world. This goes about as well as one might expect, and eventually they are all captured by the military. But there doesn’t seem to be any consequence for their actions — they aren’t deemed terrorists or thrown in prison or executed.

In fact, I never quite figured out what happened with this war at all. Did the dreaded Kessler Syndrome take place? Was Earth surrounded by an impenetrable debris field? I have no idea.

Hachimaki finally reappears in volume 4.2. The Jupiter mission is either being deliberately kept in the dark as to what’s going on back at Earth, or else they’re so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t care, because none of what’s going on seems to be a concern to them. The captain is too busy angsting about needing to write a memorable and pithy statement for when they arrive on planet. I admit that this is a legitimate concern, to know that your speech will be immediately part of history and to feel the pressure of making it good. But this worry consumes a very large portion of the final volume. And in the end, he doesn’t even write it at all, but forces the task upon Hachimaki who makes some trite speech about how love is the most powerful force in the universe.

The other plot thread which winds through these two volumes is that of the driving force behind the Jupiter mission. He’s been visiting memorials for those who died in an accident during the original testing of the spaceship’s propulsion system. But really, he feels no guilt or sadness, he just wants to improve his public image a bit so he can move on with his next big idea which is a mission to Saturn. We never do find out what his interest in Hachimaki actually was.

Since these few stories aren’t nearly enough to fill two pretty thick volumes of manga, there are large sections of each which are devoted to notes and world-building materials. These are interesting, and it’s nice to see how much thought was put in to the development of the setting. I just don’t feel like the setting was exploited to its full potential. The author really seemed to get distracted by a desperate desire to make some big statement about life, the universe and everything and forgot that the first and foremost point of writing fiction is to TELL A STORY. The story grew more and more secondary in these last two volumes and it contributed to their lack of cohesion and the jerkiness of the plot. Motivations were not properly attended to, and there was next to no resolution of anything.

In Short
The author of Planetes started with a pretty cool idea (the sort of jobs and ‘common people’ who might end up in space if space-flight becomes routine). And then, as happens pretty frequently, he was unable to execute it to its full potential. So in the end we have a relatively short manga series that shows flashes of greatness but is mostly a muddle of lost plot threads, exposition and random character actions that seem to come from nowhere. I had heard pretty positive comments about Planetes before reading it, so I was disappointed to find it like this. Perhaps the anime is more coherent?

Volume 4.1

Hachimaki, the person I thought was our main character, is completely absent from this (half)-volume. He’s off on his way to Jupiter. Meanwhile, we get some side stories and backstories for other people he collected space junk with. One of them gets to know a creepy dude with an Elvis bouffant hairdo and poor grammar. He claims to be an alien. Which fact is supposed to explain why he grabbed another woman’s boob in greeting. Is he an alien? We never know for sure. But his apology for the boob-grabbing seems to go down all right.

Another story is about landmines planted by.. I’m never quite sure. The US government? Maybe. I have to say the politics of the whole thing left me baffled. I don’t know if it was partly the translation’s fault, as there seemed to be several names for one faction. Republic Union or several vague things like that. Anyway, so there’s these mines out there that they’re not supposed to touch. Not supposed to collect as space debris. But anyway she goes home to visit her husband and son, and the son has a billion dogs in their apartment that make quite a racket. She tells him they have to go. He defies her. She learns a valuable lesson about er.. defying people, or acting young, or something. So this helps her decide what to do with the mines. Yea, or something.

And at the end of 4.1 is a lot of text. Part information on the history of space science. Part information on the world of Planetes. Where the one leaves off and the other starts is a little unclear. The verb tenses in at least the English translation do not help. It’s also very poorly copyedited. There are also ‘screen captures’, panels from parts of the stories to illustrate points. Like ‘oh, here’s the awesome advanced wheat that they’re going in the biodome’. Only some of those are shots from 4.2, so they’re rather spoilers!

In the original publication, I assume, the start of each chapter was in color. When it got bound in Japan, were they all still in color? I don’t know. But in English in volumes 1-3, only the start of the first chapter was in color. You could see that the others used to be by the depth of the shading of the black/white version. In 4.1, a couple of random chapters got color panels at the start of them. But not all. I liked that more were in color, but I would’ve also liked consistency! Do 1, or do them all, don’t.. do random ones.

Volume 4.2

To get it out of the way, the random coloring of some panels continued in this half. A couple in color, a couple not, for no rhyme or reason. Maybe they thought planets looked pretty in color and spaceships and people didn’t. I don’t know.

Hey, Hachimaki’s back! And they’re all on their way to Jupiter. Him, his Dad, presumably that chick who randomly got naked and offered sex to him earlier, and some other people. Oh, and the Captain’s angsting about what his first words should be when they get to Jupiter. And gives himself an ulcer. (Wonder if they brought any antibiotics with them to fix that.)

So, hey, Hachimaki gets to address the world(s) when they get there. And he’s learned some awesome stuff over the course of the Planetes story. About love. You need it. Maybe it’s all you need. Da da dadada.

All in all, a disappointing wrapup to the story.

At the end of this (half)-volume is more text! This time, a timeline of the backstory of the series. How we got from 2000s to the 2070s. How we got from Earth to Jupiter. Mostly it’s about fuel. We run out of oil, we need to find something else.

This timeline came too late. I think if you feel a need to include something like this at all, it needed to come much earlier. Volume 2 at the latest. Then maybe I would’ve had a clearer idea of what was going on and why. But then.. part of enjoying science fiction (at least some science fiction) is figuring it out for yourself. So with the timing of the timeline, it’s almost as if the author (or the publisher, or the English publisher) was saying ‘So? Did you figure it all out? Here, count how many things you got right.’ Or perhaps ‘In case it may not have been clear in my storytelling, here’s my thought processes behind everything and aren’t I an awesome world-builder to have thought all this through so completely?’

Final Thoughts: This whole series, by the time I finished it, felt more like snapshots of one possible future, people with some characters to keep it interesting. It never felt like a cohesive story to me. And plot points that were started, were never finished. I don’t even feel like they were left dangling though. They just sort of.. well, were snapshots. Here’s some terrorists, here’s them blowing up stuff. Here’s some mines, here’s some of them blowing up. Here’s an alien, isn’t he weird?

While I might rate individual volumes with 3 out of 5 stars (and did, on Goodreads), for the series as a whole I’m going to have to go with 2. Readable, interesting, but also incohesive and random.

My Thoughts
Before I get started on talking about the content, I must mention a huge issue I had with these volumes, a problem I place squarely at the feet of Tokyopop, who organized the English edition. The DATES. Oh my god, the freaking inconsistent confusing dates. Pretty much every new story arc began with a date, and it’s clear from the text that the volumes proceed along strictly chronological terms except for one prequel side story at the end of volume three. Unfortunately, the date progression Tokyopop provides is as so: 2068 > 2074 > 2075 > 2070 > 2075 > 2075 > 2076 > 2075 > 2077 > 2056 (flashback) > 2077 > 2077 > 2050 (flashback).

That’s just sloppy, and I find it hard to believe that this is the fault of the original. Just a short online search turned up scans of the French edition which had no such issue. This sort of idiocy on behalf of the editorial team is simply unforgivable. It is obvious no one read this through before it went to press.

Now, the story itself is more interesting than I thought it would be upon first glance. The conceit is a good one: spaceflight has become relatively routine, another industry. And yet there are still the elite, the explorers, and the grunts who do the maintenance, the work that makes the rest possible.

The main character, Hachirota Hoshino, aka Hachimaki, dreams of owning his own spaceship and answering to no one. In the meantime he works as a debris collector on a ship with a crew of three (later four), and saves his salary.

He soon decides this isn’t the way to riches, and determines to join a new group set to head for Jupiter. In spite of his many issues both physical and mental, he is finally accepted to be part of this crew. In fact, the man in charge has become very determined to have Hachimaki on board, for reasons which remain unclear.

Outside this central plot we meet a few other secondary characters who receive more than a passing introduction. Fee and Yuri, Hachimaki’s crewmates from the beginning, are interesting enough, but I can’t think of anything in particular to say about either of them. The most annoying of the secondary characters is Tanabe, an androgynous looking girl whose behavior is irritating and whiny from start to end. Inexplicably, Hachimaki eventually falls for her and at the end of volume 3 they announce their intentions to marry.

More to my taste is Hachimaki’s disreputable father Sirius Black Nanjirou Echizen Goro Hoshino. Goro is a famous and accomplished astronout who was part of the first team to go to Mars. He is semi-unwillingly tapped to head the Jupiter mission.

The plot itself and its vision of a not-so-distant future is strangely compelling. I found myself interested almost in spite of myself, because on its surface this isn’t the sort of story that I like to read. This considerable strength wars with the manga’s weaknesses: Tanabe, who I wanted to strangle, and Hachimaki’s continual hallucinations/philosophical fugues. The latter, often starring Evil!Hachimaki or a random talking cat, pull down what would otherwise be a fascinating tale of the future. They seem to be inserted because the author could not figure out how to otherwise include these maunderings on the nature of humans vs. outer space, and are a dreadful example of telling, not showing.

In Short
This science fiction story is at its strongest when actually attending to the plot and not digressing into a metaphysical mumbo jumbo of talking cats and phantoms. I enjoyed it more than I expected and look forward to seeing how the characters progress in the final two volumes.

This review is of the first three volumes.

The first volume starts off interesting. There’s these two people travelling together on a shuttle. And I think they’re both guys, but it turns out they’re not. I would have that problem again later, but it was most striking in this first scene. Well, so there’s an accident, and the woman dies. And then it’s 6 years later, which is really annoying. Because now I have to get oriented all over again, with new characters.

So these new characters are space junk gatherers. Can you hear the Klingons yelling at Scotty that the Enterprise is a garbage scow? I can! But, really, you don’t want all that space junk cluttering up the orbits. It’s a real hazard. Kills people who look like guys when they’re really girls.

Plot? Well, one of the main character’s coworkers is all broody because of that wife he lost back on the first few pages. And at the same time, there’s eco-terrorists going around blowing up smoking rooms. Because astronauts need places to smoke their cigarettes, y’all!

In volume 2, we learn that space is big, and dark, and empty, and lonely. And, then, whoa dude, did you know we’re all in space? All the time?! Floating around on our giant blue spaceship. Trippy.

So our main character, whose nickname is Hachimaki, has decided to find a plot for himself. He’s going to try to get on the special mission to Jupiter, so he can come back a hero, and make lots of money, and buy his own ship. Sounds like he’s taking the hard road to me.

And those wacky eco-terrorists who want to save space from the evil astronauts are blowing things up still.

In volume 3, space is still big and dark and empty and lonely. But Hachimaki decides to go out on (I think it’s Mars) in his spacesuit and have a picnic by himself. For days and days. And somehow he doesn’t run out of oxygen and die. But he does hallucinate a weird white cat. A mystical, cosmic, cryptic cat.

And one of his co-astronauts on the Jupiter trip, which is still in the training phase, gets naked to turn him on. And then there’s lots of embarrassing pages where she’s naked and everyone on the bus can totally see you’re reading a manga with naked boobs in it. And meanwhile Hachimaki could care less, so all that nudity is pointless!

Why is he not interested? The white cat made him impotent. Or he’s totally in love with a chick from volume 2. I… really don’t know which. But then he does up and marry her out of nowhere. But maybe that makes the cat happy so he won’t have to whip out the space Viagra.

And at the end of this volume is a longish extra about when Hachimaki’s father was out in space playing baseball on Mars while his mother was busy giving birth to him.

So, to sum up: Clearing space junk won’t get you ahead in life, except it gives you a lot of EVA experience, which helps you land the sweet Jupiter gig. But it can all really mess with your head. And look out for those eco-terrorists and their bombs.

At the end of the first two volumes is a little blurb about the background of space travel. So you can learn a bit about the famous men and (ha, did you really think I was going to say women?) who were rocket scientists and cosmonauts.

All in all, not bad, but I wish it had more focus. And what is it about Japanese manga and anime that it has to take straightforward science fiction and get all philosophical and mystical and make you ponder the meaning of it all? Because those are the bits where I just get completely lost.