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Terra Formars #7
テラフォーマーズ 7 [Terafōmāzu 7]
「全く見た事のないものと出会う時、人間は人間ではいられない。」
地球では、各国首脳が一同に会し、火星計画のもたらす利権を巡って熾烈な駆け引きを繰り広げる。火星では、燈とミッシェルを狙う者たちが、その姿を現す…！ 次第に浮き上がる「対立」、そして遂に明らかになる「裏切り」。人間VSゴキブリの構図を超えて、物語は激転する！
地球では、各国首脳が一同に会し、火星計画のもたらす利権を巡って熾烈な駆け引きを繰り広げる。火星では、燈とミッシェルを狙う者たちが、その姿を現す…！ 次第に浮き上がる「対立」、そして遂に明らかになる「裏切り」。人間VSゴキブリの構図を超えて、物語は激転する！
208 pages, Paperback
First published November 19, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 4, 2016
3 STARS!
BLURB:
....
As the situation on Mars intensifies, back on Earth the nations involved convene to negotiate their interests. China makes an offer of a rescue ship, forcing those at the council to choose sides. As the leaders deliberate, the humans on Mars find their conflicts reflecting those back home, as members of the expedition begin to turn on each other. Akari and Michelle make their way back to the rendezvous point, but will they be welcomed or attacked? As always the Terraformers lurk with more surprises in store…
** MINOR SPOILER ALERT **
So yeah there are the politics for certain people. China has some agenda regarding the Mars expedition. Of course the other country has their own 'secret' towards this project. Hmm... Is the rescue ship already launch or not? I don't know man... They're so fucked up in many levels. Poor Annex I 'sacrifice' themselves for the research but this people sit and deliberately to control the power of U-Nasa and experiment.
Back in Mars, I'm really curious with what's the Russian team has found. They're not explain it yet. However, when Komachi and Michelle's team assemble together, they faced another threat. It's the traitor. I laugh when I found who is the traitor because I don't expect it to be THAT team. Don't forget the Terraformars still around them. Now it's a battle between human.
BLURB:
....
As the situation on Mars intensifies, back on Earth the nations involved convene to negotiate their interests. China makes an offer of a rescue ship, forcing those at the council to choose sides. As the leaders deliberate, the humans on Mars find their conflicts reflecting those back home, as members of the expedition begin to turn on each other. Akari and Michelle make their way back to the rendezvous point, but will they be welcomed or attacked? As always the Terraformers lurk with more surprises in store…
** MINOR SPOILER ALERT **
So yeah there are the politics for certain people. China has some agenda regarding the Mars expedition. Of course the other country has their own 'secret' towards this project. Hmm... Is the rescue ship already launch or not? I don't know man... They're so fucked up in many levels. Poor Annex I 'sacrifice' themselves for the research but this people sit and deliberately to control the power of U-Nasa and experiment.
Back in Mars, I'm really curious with what's the Russian team has found. They're not explain it yet. However, when Komachi and Michelle's team assemble together, they faced another threat. It's the traitor. I laugh when I found who is the traitor because I don't expect it to be THAT team. Don't forget the Terraformars still around them. Now it's a battle between human.
Read
December 16, 2021I am always curious- and quite wary, in all honesty- of manga featuring an international cast. This because the depiction of non-Japanese people is very often less than stellar, not always deliberately, at times very much so. With something like Terraformars, in which zero subtlety is weirdly tied to ambitious aspirations of delving into the political thriller territory- an angle that comes into its own in this volume- the fear that it will all devolve into racist fodder is very real and, sadly, entirely confirmed.
I mean, it is not surprising. The moment the authors decided to name their two main German characters "Adolf" and "Eva", you knew what to expect. I will spoiler-tag the precise way in which the manga slides into outrageous, eye-rolling demonizing of a particular country but in all honesty, this is hardly needed. If you know which countries are involved, you will guess immediately who the bad guys are but the way in which they revel in being moustache twirling villains is still...something else.
Once again, the way in which Terraformars overreaches ends up backfiring royally. If I am not expected to read historical considerations in this whacky bare bones, standard issues version of "the future", then perhaps the manga should not be quoting actual history books.
This volume keeps up the basic structure of interspacing action packed Mars scenes with events on Earth that relate to them. The Earth centered sequences in this instance pertain to a secret meeting between the world leaders involved in the mission to discuss just what to do. Here are the parties, guess which one is the evil one: Germany (presented with an Angela Merkle expy), Japan (oddly enough, by far the ugliest character), Russia (actually looking like a glorified and prettier version of Putin), America (nondescript white guy, looks a bit like Reagan to me but may be unintentional), China (if he is meant to look like Xi, he doesn't), Rome (yeah, Rome. It's not unusual for sci-fi manga/anime to make alternate global alignments in which certain countries are made up entirely, or created from smashing different countries together, or in which some country gets promoted to a position of great importance; in this case, by "Rome", I think we are supposed to read "Vatican", a move that is very common: all I got to say is, at least no one is blaming the Jews but it would surprise no-one if it came to that).
So JAXA has done very well for itself, it seems.
This meeting is where the writer flexes his international thriller muscles and it's pretty dismal.
I wonder how many people skipped these bits. While very important plot-wise, they are still dull and nothing but people talking around a table. This can be riveting when done right, Liar Game very often has the entire cast engaged in a battle of wits that is entirely stationary, but this manga is simply not up to it. The Roma representative ("Roman"? Who even knows how to describe him) becomes the reader's stand-in as we get access to his thoughts so that we can tell just what insinuations are being made, what apparently smooth talk is, in fact, barbed threats. It turns out to be very welcome because it is borderline impossible to follow what is going on. I have mentioned before that reading this one is extremely frustrating and having to look up vocabulary pertaining to international relations is simply not something I am that keen on. I fully admit that this is my problem, not the manga's but it does not exactly make it a more involving reading experience for all that.
It's a good thing the Rome representative is also a bit clueless but still knows his way around these important folk enough to explain things to us. The narrator also pops up on occasion and when they do, it is often amusing.
I have a feeling I am not the only one who is bored to tears during this meeting. At least I am entertained by looking up every other word and trying to puzzle it all together but native speakers are likely to be simply bored. Then again they can breeze through these parts while I take forever to make any headway.
But have no fear, we switch back to Mars fairly often.
When it comes to portraying non-Japanese characters, manga and in particular this kind of shlocky manga, does not just botch the villains. No, it is not rare that even the good foreigners become a weird parody of whatever national clichés happened to catch the creators' attention. Of course, Terraformars does this as well: in a moment of unintentional comedy that made me chuckle.
While the above mentioned examples, of both villains and good guys, are of course at the extreme end of the spectrum, they are very much part of a trend. 2D culture struggles considerably to present believable non-Japanese characters. Part of this has nothing to do with their being foreign either, it's a difficulty in creating believable characters, period; but another reason is that creators are very used to working in a kind of bubble.
Writing warped, skewed, at times intensely racist characters is obviously not an exclusive of 2D culture nor of Japanese cultural products. To this day you can find it a bit all over. What distinguishes 2D is the vacuum in which these characters are conceived, developed, drawn, voiced, and then released. At no time during this process is the reaction of the demography represented ever considered, let alone consulted. You can draw your own black American man without ever having talked to one, let alone asking what he thinks about it. The lack of any pushback or accountability means that the pattern can be repeated across titles, year after year.
And repeated across titles it is. It might be thought that it's mostly "edgy" titles that follow this trend, that is part of the overall devil-may-care attitude. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Children's entertainment is not except from it. The latest entry in the Inazuma Eleven anime franchise is one of the most blatant and saddest examples I know. The whole point of IE is to get hyped about magical football, nakama power, believing in yourself and all that. It is very simple, highly repetitive and aimed at a very young audience. Earlier entries actually deviated from the norm in that we had well-rounded non-Japanese characters but Orion no Kokuin threw that to the side. We meet a Chinese character, Li Hao, who spends most the time wearing an oversize mask reminiscent of folk art, bowing to the Japanese characters left and right. In fact, he is also known as "kobun" (子分), meaning "servant". His tone, highly subservient mode of speech when addressing the Japanese form whom he basically works- despite being a kid as they are!- it is all like nails on chalkboard. It is as if Japan was not involved in literally enslaving an untold name of Chinese people, working many to death, killing so many the precise number is unknown and promoting the notion that all this is fine because the Chinese are naturally without honor and a "servant race".
Historical blindness, compounded by everything being created in a vacuum, lead to this kind of thing being very much a symptom of a wider, deeper, darker rot. At times, I toy with the notion of actually researching this and writing on it as opposed to simply venting online. But I fear I am not equipped to do it, it requires greater scholarship, a firmer grasp on the tools necessary to do it justice.
Meanwhile, though, I can always tell the world about the horror of Terraformars: forget the roaches, they are the least problematic thing in all this.*
*Or, perhaps, not. I have encountered reviewers who claim the roaches are actually meant to be black people. If this is true- then it is so unforgivably gross that I honestly cannot even know what to say. I am keeping this in mind as I carry on reading it because it may very well be I missed pointers, clues and dog-whistling that went over my head.
I mean, it is not surprising. The moment the authors decided to name their two main German characters "Adolf" and "Eva", you knew what to expect. I will spoiler-tag the precise way in which the manga slides into outrageous, eye-rolling demonizing of a particular country but in all honesty, this is hardly needed. If you know which countries are involved, you will guess immediately who the bad guys are but the way in which they revel in being moustache twirling villains is still...something else.
Once again, the way in which Terraformars overreaches ends up backfiring royally. If I am not expected to read historical considerations in this whacky bare bones, standard issues version of "the future", then perhaps the manga should not be quoting actual history books.
This volume keeps up the basic structure of interspacing action packed Mars scenes with events on Earth that relate to them. The Earth centered sequences in this instance pertain to a secret meeting between the world leaders involved in the mission to discuss just what to do. Here are the parties, guess which one is the evil one: Germany (presented with an Angela Merkle expy), Japan (oddly enough, by far the ugliest character), Russia (actually looking like a glorified and prettier version of Putin), America (nondescript white guy, looks a bit like Reagan to me but may be unintentional), China (if he is meant to look like Xi, he doesn't), Rome (yeah, Rome. It's not unusual for sci-fi manga/anime to make alternate global alignments in which certain countries are made up entirely, or created from smashing different countries together, or in which some country gets promoted to a position of great importance; in this case, by "Rome", I think we are supposed to read "Vatican", a move that is very common: all I got to say is, at least no one is blaming the Jews but it would surprise no-one if it came to that).
So JAXA has done very well for itself, it seems.
This meeting is where the writer flexes his international thriller muscles and it's pretty dismal.
I wonder how many people skipped these bits. While very important plot-wise, they are still dull and nothing but people talking around a table. This can be riveting when done right, Liar Game very often has the entire cast engaged in a battle of wits that is entirely stationary, but this manga is simply not up to it. The Roma representative ("Roman"? Who even knows how to describe him) becomes the reader's stand-in as we get access to his thoughts so that we can tell just what insinuations are being made, what apparently smooth talk is, in fact, barbed threats. It turns out to be very welcome because it is borderline impossible to follow what is going on. I have mentioned before that reading this one is extremely frustrating and having to look up vocabulary pertaining to international relations is simply not something I am that keen on. I fully admit that this is my problem, not the manga's but it does not exactly make it a more involving reading experience for all that.
It's a good thing the Rome representative is also a bit clueless but still knows his way around these important folk enough to explain things to us. The narrator also pops up on occasion and when they do, it is often amusing.
I have a feeling I am not the only one who is bored to tears during this meeting. At least I am entertained by looking up every other word and trying to puzzle it all together but native speakers are likely to be simply bored. Then again they can breeze through these parts while I take forever to make any headway.
But have no fear, we switch back to Mars fairly often.
When it comes to portraying non-Japanese characters, manga and in particular this kind of shlocky manga, does not just botch the villains. No, it is not rare that even the good foreigners become a weird parody of whatever national clichés happened to catch the creators' attention. Of course, Terraformars does this as well: in a moment of unintentional comedy that made me chuckle.
While the above mentioned examples, of both villains and good guys, are of course at the extreme end of the spectrum, they are very much part of a trend. 2D culture struggles considerably to present believable non-Japanese characters. Part of this has nothing to do with their being foreign either, it's a difficulty in creating believable characters, period; but another reason is that creators are very used to working in a kind of bubble.
Writing warped, skewed, at times intensely racist characters is obviously not an exclusive of 2D culture nor of Japanese cultural products. To this day you can find it a bit all over. What distinguishes 2D is the vacuum in which these characters are conceived, developed, drawn, voiced, and then released. At no time during this process is the reaction of the demography represented ever considered, let alone consulted. You can draw your own black American man without ever having talked to one, let alone asking what he thinks about it. The lack of any pushback or accountability means that the pattern can be repeated across titles, year after year.
And repeated across titles it is. It might be thought that it's mostly "edgy" titles that follow this trend, that is part of the overall devil-may-care attitude. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Children's entertainment is not except from it. The latest entry in the Inazuma Eleven anime franchise is one of the most blatant and saddest examples I know. The whole point of IE is to get hyped about magical football, nakama power, believing in yourself and all that. It is very simple, highly repetitive and aimed at a very young audience. Earlier entries actually deviated from the norm in that we had well-rounded non-Japanese characters but Orion no Kokuin threw that to the side. We meet a Chinese character, Li Hao, who spends most the time wearing an oversize mask reminiscent of folk art, bowing to the Japanese characters left and right. In fact, he is also known as "kobun" (子分), meaning "servant". His tone, highly subservient mode of speech when addressing the Japanese form whom he basically works- despite being a kid as they are!- it is all like nails on chalkboard. It is as if Japan was not involved in literally enslaving an untold name of Chinese people, working many to death, killing so many the precise number is unknown and promoting the notion that all this is fine because the Chinese are naturally without honor and a "servant race".
Historical blindness, compounded by everything being created in a vacuum, lead to this kind of thing being very much a symptom of a wider, deeper, darker rot. At times, I toy with the notion of actually researching this and writing on it as opposed to simply venting online. But I fear I am not equipped to do it, it requires greater scholarship, a firmer grasp on the tools necessary to do it justice.
Meanwhile, though, I can always tell the world about the horror of Terraformars: forget the roaches, they are the least problematic thing in all this.*
*Or, perhaps, not. I have encountered reviewers who claim the roaches are actually meant to be black people. If this is true- then it is so unforgivably gross that I honestly cannot even know what to say. I am keeping this in mind as I carry on reading it because it may very well be I missed pointers, clues and dog-whistling that went over my head.
August 31, 2026
Volume 7 was a lot better than Volume 6. The fighting was still good, but it was the story progression that really made this volume stand out. We finally learned why the Annex 1 Plan A was a failure, which was something I had been wondering about for a while. We also finally discovered the goal of the mysterious enemy and, more importantly, who is actually behind everything.
I really enjoyed how this volume started answering some of the bigger questions that had been building up throughout the previous volumes. It felt like the story was finally moving forward in a meaningful way, rather than focusing almost entirely on fighting and character development.
Overall, I really enjoyed this volume. The combination of good action, major revelations, and actual story progression made it one of the most satisfying volumes so far. After Volume 2, this is definitely my favorite volume in the series so far.
I really enjoyed how this volume started answering some of the bigger questions that had been building up throughout the previous volumes. It felt like the story was finally moving forward in a meaningful way, rather than focusing almost entirely on fighting and character development.
Overall, I really enjoyed this volume. The combination of good action, major revelations, and actual story progression made it one of the most satisfying volumes so far. After Volume 2, this is definitely my favorite volume in the series so far.
April 19, 2022
Interesting revelation
January 6, 2023
Yu Sasuga's "Terra Formars #7" is more politics than action. Russia, America, and Japan jockeying for power and dominance.
For hardcore fans!
For hardcore fans!
April 30, 2018
Interesante
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews