About the Mangaka

Takemiya Keiko has two licensed works (that I know of) Andromeda Stories and To Terra, both of which are three volumes and have gained both fans and naysayers. She’s more famous however for Kaze to Ki no Uta, who many attribute as being one of the original pioneer titles of shojo back in the 1970’s.

About the Manga

Is this series really the greatest thing to happen to manga? Is it really nothing but pure sexist material? Is this series really worth taking the time to read?

Three question, with three short answers, No, No, and Yes. If you want the in-depth answers, look below the cut

I’ve been planning to read this series ever since I saw the anime, however what prompted me to get it now was a review in a local magazine. The girl reviewing it pretty much ripped it up and stated it was nothing but sexist garbage. Since I’d seen the anime I didn’t have that opinion and was really curious to see if it had been changed.

Had to wait near three weeks for the damn books to arrive, but I’m glad I waited. I find myself in a different opinion to the magazine.

While it’s true there are very few active women in this series (Physis being the only consistent one), I didn’t see anything in the series that screamed sexism.

Art wise, it’s pretty much what you expect from a series drawn in the 1980’s, the art is rather shojoish, and at times is bloody funny because of the way the art is drawn.

This style of art is definitely going to be a turn off for a lot of people, as it’s very dated and doesn’t have the ‘in your face’ style many shonen series have today. However it does have several aspects that really make it an outstanding series. Firstly the designs are consistent, in fact so much so it’s like a machine drew them. Even after time slips its easy to fall into the stories pace again because it’s still easy to follow who is who.

Where this series really succeeds is the story. As I said I’ve seen the anime, and while enjoyed it, I always felt it was to strained, taking things to seriously. The manga is the way it should have been from the start. It has all the tension and seriousness of the anime, but also manages to interject humour just when it’s needed. Story telling like this is great as being serious all the time really drags a series down.

Sadly it’s far from being perfect, the biggest issue I have is the number of volumes. Three volumes just don’t allow the story to flow at it’s best, and the time slips can be a bit confusing at first. With a few more volumes we could have had better slips, but also the ending would have been less rushed, and other characters could have been explored properly.

Tony is a bit weird in the manga, he feels to robotic like he’s nothing more than Jomy’s will given form, which is a bit creepy. I also found the bit where he created a baby, then blew it up a bit much. That said I did like his ending, it was sad and touching at the same time.

I also found the afterword story equally heart warming, since it resolved something I didn’t like about the series.

The thing I really liked about this series though were the characters, all of them, from the smallest to the largest were so powerful in their roles, it’s like they were all the main cast. It’s rare to find a manga where this happens these days.

Vertical have released all three volumes, though I couldn’t find it on their website (or an of the manga they’ve released for that matter). I’m torn over the way they released it though, I both like and hate it.

What I like about the release is that they reduced the panel size slightly, so we have a nice border around the panels. This naturally means we have no gutter issues at all!! On the down side to compensate for that they increased the size to that of normal Trade Paper Back, there is also an increased page count. That said I would have preferred a size more in line with the likes of Jyu oh Sei, just to keep my shelves nice and tidy

I also have a few niggles with the translation. Overall it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, however  it did have a few to many “dude” in there for my liking. They also left all of the SFX’s without any form of translation. I wish they’d done it more like Yen Press who put the english next to the SFX. As I said, a few niggles, but nothing major.

So, back to the questions, I haven’t found anything in To Terra that would make me say it’s the greatest series ever, or that would make me scream sexism. However, it is one of those series that I think everyone should read at least once. So get you to you’re library

Where to Buy

• Brits: Book Depository or Play.com (currently out of stock)
• Yanks: Amazon.com
• Canadians: Amazon.ca