Hadn't heard much about X-Day, but I've seen the title around and was wondering if it was worth taking a look. Thanks for the recommendation! The story sounds chillingly all too plausible.
The chain of events leading up to the big Spoiler in Tokyo Babylon occur at the end of volume 5 (of a total of seven), and it pretty much snowballs from there. The series gets noticeably darker before then though, and with more hints as to the direction the story is taking scattered throughout. Volume 3 (Call) is one of my favorites--pretty much the entire book is devoted to Subaru dealing with a group of girls convinced that the world is going to end in 1999, and that they have been chosen to save it.
X-Day is great. In my opinion it does manage a reasonable resolution by the end of Vol. 2, though I would have been perfectly happy with more of it.
Tokyo Babylon will get progressively better with every volume, in my opinion, and generally about as much better as Vol. 2 gets from Vol. 1. Vol. 4 is my favorite and in my opinion one of the most brilliant and wrenching pieces of manga I have read. The early volumes do provide a set-up so that the plot does not come out of nowhere, which, from Vol. 1, it kind of would. (Set-up as in that gorgeous page with Seishiro's hawk.) I am just glad to be seeing it released in English, since I originally had to read it in Japanese and French, and at that point (c. 2000) there was a fairly widespread assumption that it would never be licensed in America for content reasons. It's nice to see that disproved.
I loved X-Day. It's up there on my list of books that changed my life -- I was a lot like Polaris when I first read it!
And much as I ended up wishing for more, I think my storytelling sensibilities would've been offended had the author gone down the road of a typical shojo manga. The story's so poignant as it lies; maybe a few "down the road" one-shots would've been nice, or a Book 3, but no longer than that.
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I hear the TB arc gets going in V.4. But V.2 honestly was enough of an improvement over 1 that I was surprised.
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The chain of events leading up to the big Spoiler in Tokyo Babylon occur at the end of volume 5 (of a total of seven), and it pretty much snowballs from there. The series gets noticeably darker before then though, and with more hints as to the direction the story is taking scattered throughout. Volume 3 (Call) is one of my favorites--pretty much the entire book is devoted to Subaru dealing with a group of girls convinced that the world is going to end in 1999, and that they have been chosen to save it.
Reply
Tokyo Babylon will get progressively better with every volume, in my opinion, and generally about as much better as Vol. 2 gets from Vol. 1. Vol. 4 is my favorite and in my opinion one of the most brilliant and wrenching pieces of manga I have read. The early volumes do provide a set-up so that the plot does not come out of nowhere, which, from Vol. 1, it kind of would. (Set-up as in that gorgeous page with Seishiro's hawk.) I am just glad to be seeing it released in English, since I originally had to read it in Japanese and French, and at that point (c. 2000) there was a fairly widespread assumption that it would never be licensed in America for content reasons. It's nice to see that disproved.
Reply
And much as I ended up wishing for more, I think my storytelling sensibilities would've been offended had the author gone down the road of a typical shojo manga. The story's so poignant as it lies; maybe a few "down the road" one-shots would've been nice, or a Book 3, but no longer than that.
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