Mothers' Day is fast approaching and on May 4, the perfect gift to introduce anyone you care about to the world of manga will be released for U.S. readers to enjoy. TWIN SPICA embodies all that is good in Japanese comics... or for any comics for that matter. This particular manga touches the heart with deeply emotional storytelling about characters you will come to love and cherish. This is a definite MUST BUY for those who love stories like Grave of the Fireflies and 2001 Nights: A Space Oddessy.
[- anim8trix]
Twin Spica Manga Review by Scott Green [Source: AICN.com]
So, Twin Spica... it follows the efforts of a minimalisticly rendered, cherubically illustrated thirteen year old girl as she endeavors to become an astronaut. Up until its conclusion last year, the manga was serialized in Japan in Comic Flapper, a seinen anthology for males in their upper teens (or older).
Comic Flapper does run some mecha, like the manga adaptation of Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino's anime concerning a video game champion turned mecha pilot in a post apocalyptic exodus, Overman King Gainer. It featured a recent incarnation of venerable space psychic sci-fi saga Locke the Superman. It had the manga version of risqué perfumer/secret agent Najica. But, stories about young girls for that seinen demographic are Comic Flapper's primary niche. Dark Horse published Translucent, about a shy girl who literally turns invisible, originated in Flapper. Controversial Dance in the Vampire Bund is another Comic Flapper work. I've recently been talking up Christie High Tension, Area 88 creator Kaoru Shintani's stories of Mycroft Holmes' daughter, and that's from this anthology too.
The appeal of these works to their male readership isn't generally as apparently unified as the collection of titles bundled in an anthology like Dengeki Daioh, which similarly features cute girl series. For example, the draw of Translucent was its feel-good aura and optimism about human nature. I haven't read any Dance in the Vampire Bund or seen the anime, but I've read praise for the richness of its world creation and the quality of its action.
The appeal of Twin Spica... it's a little girl working to realize her dreams of going into space. You might be in high school, or college or on the job, working toward something of dubious significance, but here's a girl giving it her all to rocket out of Earth's atmosphere. Now that's a goal with some gravity. The desire for meaning is universal. We all want our effort to take us someplace special.
I look forward to the chance to read and write about some manga. While seinen material is often what has me watching my mailbox, Twin Spica wasn't the object of that anticipation. It was a well regarded work to which I thought I'd be indifferent. Maybe due to my dislike of travel in general, though I'm a lifelong geek, space in and of itself has does little for me. Even my considerable admiration for other manga on the subject (Planetes and 2001 Nights) didn't have me itching to read the next great space exploration story. Coming of age stories aren't of particularly keen interest to me either.
Ultimately, the manga surprised me. Reading about Twin Spica's lead trying to go into space, I got choked up.
I have reservations about seinen manga featuring young leads. It tends to open the door to iffiness. I shouldn't say that I distrust escapist manga. I certainly read enough of it. Nostalgia is ok for occasional fun, but it generally strikes me as unproductive. Mono no aware is a can of worms that I probably shouldn't open at this point. Recapturing the spirit of youth often seems to translate to thinking like a child, and that sort of regressive mindset bothers me.
It's difficult to imagine Twin Spica going in those bothersome directions. Nor will its lead journey be simply a function of determination. It's set to push the character, but instead of regular formulas, it is more sensitive and naturalistic than other space academy manga (even ones I've liked).
Twin Spica (named for the binary star system in the Virgo constellation) opens with thirteen year old Asumi Kamogawa quizzing herself on the history of space exploration. She then prompts herself to recall the three tragedies of manned space flight. You can read about the first two on Wikipedia: the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger explosion. The third occurred when Asumi Kamogawa was one year old. In 2010, (the manga began in 2001 and ran until 2009, so this was always near future) Japan launched its first manned space flight. 72 seconds after takeoff, the liquid fuel in the rocket's boosters caught fire. The space center was unable to activate the "flight stop system" that would explode the craft mid air. As a consequence, the Lion crashed into the city of Yuigahama.
Asumi's mother was one of the crash's civilian victims. Despite, or perhaps because of this, Asumi's dream since childhood was to fly a rocket into space. As Twin Spica opens, she's making her first steps toward realizing this hope with her entrance into the space academy that Japan set up.
Though Asumi is evidently working as hard as possible, "dream" is the right word for her goal. The manga doesn't position it as an ambition in a heated sense. "Guts and hard work" aren't the theme here. And, while Twin Spica is attentively realistic in its handling of space, there is an ethereal quality to the manga. I didn't catch any pronounced examples in this volume, but Kou Yaginuma reportedly references favorite children's author Kenji Miyazawa's classic Night on the Galactic Railroad, about an allegorical trip into the heavens. This is haunted manga. It's explicitly subject to spirit visitations courtesy of the "Lion" apparition from the like named rocket, outfitted with a theme park mask. But, that's not the extent to the manga's ghosts.
Asumi's mother did not suffer an immediate death in the Lion's crash. Prior to experiencing her mother's death at a young age, for a number of years, Asumi knew her mother as a mute, featureless mask of bandages. A pair of prequel stories included in the volume explore how Asumi processed those events. What's demonstrated in the chapters is that Asumi has her own way of relating to situations like her mother's, or at least that she's uninhibited and sees her visions to fruition. The preview that Vertical posted serves as an example of how emotionally devastating for the reader Asumi's efforts to bring her visions into reality can be.
Small, practical despite her big dream, occasionally taken by self doubt or trauma, Asumi is an empathy magnet. This engenders emotion that does tread dangerously close to moe territory. Yet, because the manga appears to be devoid of cynicism, it's difficult to hold its similarities to a larger trend against it.
Small, practical despite her big dream, occasionally taken by self doubt or trauma, Asumi is an empathy magnet. This engenders emotion that does tread dangerously close to moe territory. Yet, because the manga appears to be devoid of cynicism, it's difficult to hold its similarities to a larger trend against it.
Yaginuma finds effective ways to accentuate Asumi's significance without stacking the deck. It's apparent that a dynamic is being generated in which Asumi will have to rely on her peers and vice versa, but so far, she is her own guide. Sure, there's Jiminy Lion, but he serves to offset the ineptness of the adults around Asumi. Her father is a hard working laborer, who cherishes his daughter's dreams, but he doesn't seem to have either been well equipped or able to come up to speed in raising her alone. Beyond his domestic issues, the man hauls off and hits his daughter twice as a consequence of being unable to contain his emotions or otherwise communicate with her. Asumi's school teacher/guidance councelor is passively obstructionist towards her hopes of joining the space academy. At the space academy itself, so far, what been seen of the adults staffing the place has been questionable as well.
Twin Spica does not rely on attachment to the character types or the subject matter involved. It speaks to a human need and that effect is compounded by the hope and sadness of its lead. Vertical's Minister of Enlightenment Ed Chavez has noted that Twin Spica's plot works a lot harder in driving the series than many other manga's. Yet, a volume in I've found it more driven by emotions. The result is a powerfully effecting manga.
