Twin Spica

I don't often rush to review a series that I haven't read or seen a substantial amount to draw an opinion on, but tonight I found the manga series Twin Spica so awing and dream-like that I HAD to share it.

As the story goes, in the year 2010, Japan's first manned spacecraft failed to launch when the gas caught fire. The entire crew was killed and the rocket crashed into the nearby city, killing many people. Asumi Kamogawa was born in the same year, and grew up knowing her mother only in a comatose state, completely covered in bandages before she passed away when Asumi was five. Once the funeral had passed and her mother was created, the young girl meets and befriends "Mr. Lion", a man who wears a cartoon mascot head. Mr. Lion teaches Asumi about outer space and the stars, and the girl's passion to someday pilot a rocket grows. She promises her father and friend that they'll get on her space ship for free.

At fourteen, with some trials and bumps in the road, Asumi applies for the Tokyo Space School. With the love of Mr. Lion and her father, she's sent off into a strange new setting where she spends her first week locked in an isolated room with two strangers. There, Asumi defies the impossible after reliving the trauma in her childhood.

* * *

At this point, I haven't gone into much detail and not much has happened, but the cartoony style of Twin Spica portrays a shocking story with hidden meanings.

Never have I seen this accomplished with an art style so freakishly similar to Akiko and the Planet Smoo by Mark Crilley.

Supposedly a series with so much true fact blurs the lines of life, love, reality and legend in only this one volume I picked up at the library today.

When Asumi first meets Mr. Lion at age five, he's surprised that she can see him and claims he's a ghost. Further hints about his identity are revealed later. Who he is and his purpose is so far a mystery, but he is the element that's turning your science brain upside-down as you read.

The book is ridiculously easy to fall in love with, and I'm already longing for more.

Twin Spica is like nothing I've seen yet.

- Much luvz, Hideki