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
*sighs* Strike another for the Junk Pile.
Please be warned, this post does include heavy spoilers as I include elements of the story that make no sense.
After reading To Terra I was really looking forward to reading this, but right from the outset it fails to live up to expectations.
The volumes are small compared with the previous To Terra volumes, in fact all three barely makes one and half volumes of To Terra.
Art wise it was the same style as before, but I found it a bit off in this series. Something about the way the art unfolds really doesn’t appeal. For me though it’s the character designs that feel more off than anything.
Story wise, initially I was really impressed. It had the potential to be a really great story. Unfortunately the speed, large inconsistencies, and abrupt ending really killed it.
Several key things are just done with no explanation, for example we suddenly get the evil king. It’s like he went to bed all nice and well loved, and woke up like an evil twin. We’re later shows what probably happened when it happens to others, but it’s never properly explained.
There’s also the initial invasion, the way it unfolds just doesn’t make sense, it has a huge gaping hole in it.
Then we get the relationships. The first ne is a subtle incest between mother and son. It’s made clear that the son has feelings for the mother, but she loves her husband still. However Keiko builds up this relationship between them. It’s a very loving and strong relationship. However mommy decides to go back and allow herself to be brainwashed, and abandons her son.
Given the relationship that had been building up this swift change in attitude really doesn’t feel right to me.
Then, as if to make it even more incomprehensible, he runs off and starts a full blown incestuous affair with his twin sister. Incest can be a good story hook, but I felt it was used very wrongly in this series.
The pacing on this series is the one major flaw however, the story is to epic for it’s size. Because of this events take place far to fast and are all cramped together. The volumes should have been thicker, and an extra few volumes. This would have allowed the story to be spread out, and the sticky elements to be made more clear.
Where it really fell down though was in Vertical’s handling of the series. It’s one of the worst handling of a series I’ve ever seen. It’s not been butchered per say, but it’s like the series didn’t bother with any form of quality control, and the guy who did the translation didn’t fully understand english. It’s full of grammar errors, spelling mistakes, and some really weird word choices.
I thought I’d seen some bad stuff in my time, but this is insanity. Needless to say this goes into the junk pile, and stays there.
Where to Buy
Note: Trust me, don’t bother!!
- Brits: Book Depository or Play.com
- Yanks: Amazon.com
- Canadians: Amazon.ca
