About the Mangaka

Nothing available on Suhou Mizutaka.

About the Manga

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This is one of those rare occurrences where the manga, not the anime, sucks beyond belief. Usually they bastardise the manga to make an anime, this time around though it was the anime that was bastardised.

One of my favourite characters in the anime was Katsushiro, he was an excellent character in the anime. However in the manga he’s reduced to a spoilt rich brat and a closet pervert to boot.

Sadly almost all of the other characters get the same treatment, and are altered in various ways.

The thing that got me is that even the character designs differ in a lot of ways to those of the anime. If it weren’t for a loose association with the story and the title, I’d of thought of this as a different story. Or rather with another title I’d of considered it a shameless rip off or spoof of the anime.

The thing that got me is that they were willing to spend a reported $300k per episode on the anime, but it seems they aren’t willing to spend anything on the manga. Cramming the entire 26 episodes into a mere two volumes.

The odd thing is that Mizutaka is a good artist, and I really liked his style. He’s good at drawing cute, if a bit cartoony characters. Though I wonder if he could of drawn more seriously.

The story is where this series fails in a big way. Both the original movie and anime are masterworks. Sadly the manga fails in a big way to live up to it’s big brother and sister.

However there is one area in where it does beat the original anime version, and that’s in the explanations of what happened before the story begins. It explains the how the war started and ended, as well as how a flesh and blood man could take out a huge battle ship alone. The anime simply did it, where as the manga explains it.

Truthfully when I read the introductory chapter I was overjoyed, my expectations went through the roof. Sadly by the end of the second chapter they’d fallen through the floor.

Del Rey did a good job production wise. The translation is smooth and consistent with no flow issues. And as I’ve come to expect all honorific’s were left intact

Overall I was devastated by this manga. I will read volume two, but only because it’s a two volume series. If it were longer I wouldn’t bother with it. In other words, I’ve thrown it into my Junk Pile.

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