Obsessions Old and New
For those of you who've yet to read the delightful Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, there's now a torrent containing all fourteen volumes of the scanlation available. Now you've no excuse. Do yourself a huge favour: grab a copy of CDisplay and settle down with simply the most beautiful manga every produced, bar none.
Meanwhile, at utterly the opposite end of the spectrum, after watching the first episode of the anime, I decided to hunt down the original manga of Bokurano. (Scanlations available via BitTorrent from MangaScreener.) My initial thought was that the large cast of the story might mean that a few characters would be getting killed off in the course of the story. In retrospect, that can only be described as a staggeringly woeful underestimate. This is not a happy story, or a comfortable one to read. It is, however, strongly compelling, and callously brutal to an extent paralleled only by Battle Royale.
It begins simply enough, presenting itself as yet another post-Evangelion giant robot fighting story (albeit with the mecha themselves on a scale which dwarfs even the normal ludicrous standards of the genre). An assorted group of teenagers, led by Generic Shounen Hero #3, fight off a robot invader from another world and are brought closer together by their shared victory. As they celebrate atop their machine, one of the kids pats the hero on the back... and he falls over the side to his death. Meanwhile, hundreds of people in the nearby town have been killed as a result of the battle, and the government is looking for answers. This isn't the way it's supposed to go...
Thereafter, the children slowly begin to discover exactly what they've gotten themselves into. I'd love to go into detail, but a lot of the twists really are best encountered unspoiled. In the end, the combat scenes in Bokurano are purely a hook for a story whose real objective appears to be to uncover the breaking point of human beings. Strongly recommended reading, even for non-mecha fans, although with the caveat that some of the issues it deals with might well push some very unwelcome buttons with certain readers.
Meanwhile, at utterly the opposite end of the spectrum, after watching the first episode of the anime, I decided to hunt down the original manga of Bokurano. (Scanlations available via BitTorrent from MangaScreener.) My initial thought was that the large cast of the story might mean that a few characters would be getting killed off in the course of the story. In retrospect, that can only be described as a staggeringly woeful underestimate. This is not a happy story, or a comfortable one to read. It is, however, strongly compelling, and callously brutal to an extent paralleled only by Battle Royale.
It begins simply enough, presenting itself as yet another post-Evangelion giant robot fighting story (albeit with the mecha themselves on a scale which dwarfs even the normal ludicrous standards of the genre). An assorted group of teenagers, led by Generic Shounen Hero #3, fight off a robot invader from another world and are brought closer together by their shared victory. As they celebrate atop their machine, one of the kids pats the hero on the back... and he falls over the side to his death. Meanwhile, hundreds of people in the nearby town have been killed as a result of the battle, and the government is looking for answers. This isn't the way it's supposed to go...
Thereafter, the children slowly begin to discover exactly what they've gotten themselves into. I'd love to go into detail, but a lot of the twists really are best encountered unspoiled. In the end, the combat scenes in Bokurano are purely a hook for a story whose real objective appears to be to uncover the breaking point of human beings. Strongly recommended reading, even for non-mecha fans, although with the caveat that some of the issues it deals with might well push some very unwelcome buttons with certain readers.