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Terra Formars #8
テラフォーマーズ 8 [Terafōmāzu 8]
「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。」
第3班対第4班の戦いが続く中、しばし沈黙していたテラフォーマーたちが驚きの変化を見せ、戦争は三つ巴の様相に！ そして第4班は、ついに禁断の最終兵器を投入することに…！ 果たすべき使命に生きる戦士たちの覚悟が、火星の大地をさらに熱くする！！
第3班対第4班の戦いが続く中、しばし沈黙していたテラフォーマーたちが驚きの変化を見せ、戦争は三つ巴の様相に！ そして第4班は、ついに禁断の最終兵器を投入することに…！ 果たすべき使命に生きる戦士たちの覚悟が、火星の大地をさらに熱くする！！
208 pages, Paperback
First published February 19, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 4, 2016
3 STARS!
BLURB:
....
In a sad reflection of the situation on Earth, factions among the human explorers on Mars fall into conflict with each other, a fight they can ill afford as the relentless Terraformars continue to close in on them. The cockroaches have begun to display more human-like qualities, and the battle becomes even more desperate. If the humans can’t set aside their differences long enough to face this threat, death is the only guaranteed outcome…
** MINOR SPOILER ALERT **
Damn it! So the China team is behind the sabotage because they want to control the experiment and U-Nasa. I don't know what's left with humanity anymore when everyone has their hidden agendas all along? Luckily, the Russian team is helping them. Whew. What a strong grandpa! Both of them have a strong and excellent gene. Octopus and Crab? Who is the strongest, huh?
Btw, there was a sad moment but quickly covered by WTF moment in the ending. Ahh... after the confrontation with traitor, now they have to face with Terraformars again. I'm kinda enjoyed this volume but some conflicts are quite unbelievable. Yeah, the joy of being 'unique'! Of course, the Terraformars always learning something new. So over-the-top for cockroach.
BLURB:
....
In a sad reflection of the situation on Earth, factions among the human explorers on Mars fall into conflict with each other, a fight they can ill afford as the relentless Terraformars continue to close in on them. The cockroaches have begun to display more human-like qualities, and the battle becomes even more desperate. If the humans can’t set aside their differences long enough to face this threat, death is the only guaranteed outcome…
** MINOR SPOILER ALERT **
Damn it! So the China team is behind the sabotage because they want to control the experiment and U-Nasa. I don't know what's left with humanity anymore when everyone has their hidden agendas all along? Luckily, the Russian team is helping them. Whew. What a strong grandpa! Both of them have a strong and excellent gene. Octopus and Crab? Who is the strongest, huh?
Btw, there was a sad moment but quickly covered by WTF moment in the ending. Ahh... after the confrontation with traitor, now they have to face with Terraformars again. I'm kinda enjoyed this volume but some conflicts are quite unbelievable. Yeah, the joy of being 'unique'! Of course, the Terraformars always learning something new. So over-the-top for cockroach.
Read
May 10, 2024This is the 8th volume of the ongoing madness that is Terraformars. Much has already happened, and quite a lot happens here, so here is a recap: the premise of this manga is that in order to make Mars inhabitable by humans, scientists send over to the Red Planet a bunch of cockroaches and moss. This has to do with temperature regulation and if this sounds a bit odd, you have not seen nothing yet.
500 years pass and a team of sods- I mean, a manned mission- is sent to exterminate the overflow of roaches, now that they have served their purpose. Except, it turns out that the cockroaches have evolved into what I dub Gori-roaches, seen in all their glory here:
Despite being ripped, monstrous, huge and not at all within what the crew was led to expect, the two idiots who stumble on one of these critters decides to have a chat. In English. Because I suppose Gori-roaches would not understand Japanese. She gets promptly killed, starting the manga's tradition of Fridging Its Women.
What follows is a fight to the death between the human crew, who has been subjected to a brutal surgery that adds insect DNA, and must activate it via injections. Pretty much everyone dies, except the lead, Komachi and this Hiruma guy.
Twenty more years roll over and a virus from Mars is killing people left and right and in order to make a vaccine, another manned mission- this time more prepared (I mean...kinda)- is sent, as live samples of the Gori-roaches is required.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything and anything.
Terraformars seems to be an amalgamation of influences, it tries very hard to emulate Attack on Titan, the franchise that made intelligent super violence mainstream and even a cultural phenomenon- while lacking the brains to pull it off- while winking at the likes of Gantz and maybe even old sci-fi creature features.
As far as the gore and violence go, it is usually extremely good and this is, by far, the manga's greatest strength. Anyone can write "and thousands of Gori-roaches are shredded into bits by Cool Dude with Insect-and-by-now-other-animal-Power sweeps through, limbs flying all over, hell yeah!" but it does take a lot of talent to actually draw and give it a sense of rapid movement. Action manga is not always appreciated for the effort it requires. In order to make static images read as not just moving but moving at a great pace, a mangaka needs to hone their skill, often for years on end and not everyone can vividly render inner organs bursting and the like.
With all this said, Terraformars is full of "wtf". It is full of sameness, with characters blending together, leans so heavily into national clichés that it becomes painful, insists on telling us the bra size of each female character (I am not making this up) and you can tell just when a named one is about to die because we will have a flashback sequence. Done once, or even twice, and the reader can still be kept on the edge of their seats but all too soon it becomes obvious. This is a trope but one this manga overindulges in.
At this point, the ship has been attacked by Gori-roaches even before it lands, it has crashed but is operational; all crew people have escaped, divided into squads, each one under the control of an officer. The squads are: 1, Japan lead by Komachi; 2, US, lead by Michelle; 3, Russia, led by Asimov; 4, China, led by Liu; 5, Germany, led by Adolf (his love interest is...Eva. I am not making this up either); 5, Rome (don't ask), led by Joseph.
The idea is that each squad will escape in opposite directions, making it harder for the Gori-roaches to kill them all (a rare case of intelligence), capture live samples and then convene back at the ship/research facility.
Except, oh no, the Chinese have betrayed everyone! Who could have seen this coming?! In a Japanese work of fiction? Color me surprise.
Now, I am, perhaps, not being fair. The representation of Chinese characters in 2D is diverse- very often gauche and not exactly well done, either- and what we see here just so happens to be the tippy point of the most extreme gradients on a wide spectrum.
If I were to qualify Chinese characters in 2D, I would say a very common theme is their intelligence. Chinese characters are hard to read, they scheme, smile at your face while preparing your sure and painful demise, and have a million plans going at the same time. They look ahead and can be extremely cold. They range from villains with not a shred of redemption, to morally ambiguous by definition (Wang from Gundam 00, Lao from Black Butler, Count D from Little Shop of Horrors are the go-to examples but I'm sure there are more) to truly heroic (almost every Chinese character in D. Gray Man but Kamui stands out as for all his whacky ways, he is most definitely a schemer).
I am unsure how these characteristics got agglutinated together and it is entirely possible there are many titles I am unaware of that explode these expectations altogether (for example, there are recent entries that take place in China, like 薬屋のひとりごと 1 Kusuriya no Hitorigoto 1 , very likely to do away with this if only because no one stands out as "the Chinese" characters) but that it is a recurring feature of sorts, and one recognizable enough in its own right, is also true.
Terraformars does not break the mold. Its Chinese cast is by far the most savvy (unsure about Rome, that has barely appeared) and their plan within a plan, while apparently absolutely insane and evil, is actually thought out. It includes faking everyone's death which works out quite well as officially, they are an engineer troops and thus not that strong. Everyone in this major mission of a hundred people strong (I am unsure how many have been slaughtered by now, but we may be down to half) has a rank as to their animal powers. Liu's team is ranked very low, deceptively so, making everyone look down on them. It is clever and this manga is in dire, dire, dire need of truly clever characters.
Of course, there are more scheming squads around. The Russians have their whole side quest that includes searching the pyramids (oh yeah, the Gori-roaches built pyramids!) and investigating a Gori-God, or something; Rome has been mostly absent probably because of whatever it has in mind and has not shared with class; Japan is not exactly not trying to move in the dark even if its troops remain oblivious.
But still, when it comes to coolly enforcing a plan, the Chinese take the lead. If the manga were less wonky, not as full of demented decisions and brainlessly running into danger because RAR!!! then I am sure the reader might hate the Chinese for this. I do not. I appreciate that they have steps thought up ahead, that they are going through, changing their strategy according to circumstance.
I mean, the women are not taking a shower, on their own, in a planet infested with giant roaches hellbent on killing humans...as has actually happened. DO. NOT. DO. THIS. AND. EXPECT. ME. TO. CARE.
This volume also goes some way to showing the Chinese crew more as people as opposed to "WE BE THE VILLAINS, WE LOVE EEET!" as has been the case up to this point. It is not enough, though...but let us not forget that this a manga that gave us Adolf and Eva.
Oh the subject of intelligence, one has a feeling that the creators have a bone to pick in this regard. You see, while the manga is known abroad- if it is known at all, that is- as brainless entertainment, this mangaka/artist duo have ambitions. The manga has quoted actual history books, gone into the importance of the net in human civilization, delved into entomology every other chapter so that the insect abilities can be explained and recently, has expanded this into biology writ larger once other animals came into play. There is a long sequence in which fighting is juxtaposed with Genesis (the arcane language making it a struggle) and we get extremely long names, like this: [全危険区域救助及び戦闘用防御甲冑 [マン・ザ・シェル]], obscure terms for animals like this [銀河蝦虎魚], that actually look and in some cases will only get you hits in...Chinese.
Maybe this is why the creators decided that Chinese people are just smarter than everyone else, look at the all the characters! We do that as well, we'll seem smart! Yeah...!
It is probably worth reminding readers that TF would very likely not exist if not Attack on Titan, a beautifully crafted story, with such impressive worldbuilding as to give one pause, and also featuring naked giant monsters killing people in very graphic ways. Of course, AoT became an international hit, and TF is only popular in Japan. I expect the creators were, on some level, compelled to imbue their own story with layers.
Unfortunately, the layers tend to be a lot of vague vagueness. This seems more EVA-like, with its council of vagueness (although this is an anime thing, too), with a lot being deliberately kept from the reader, only alluded too obliquely in between splatter, in the hopes of keeping them interested enough to count as foreshadowing.
The target audience can probably enjoy this more freely, not having to hit the dictionary but even here, I suspect it will have to do if it wants to know the animals in question. This is not common knowledge, at all, but borderline lore. But it can turn off its brain more readily and ride the wild, wild, wild ride in ways that I cannot. Part of it is just my personality, I will roll my eyes at "HeLlO? heLLO!" as idiots make their way into the darkest, most isolated places entirely on their own. So in a very real sense, I am not the target audience.
It goes without saying that you should probably not bother with this. At all. Off the top of my head, there are about half a dozen hyper violent titles that are superior in very single regard. Even when it comes to weirdness, Gantz, I think, has it beaten by far, along with 神さまの言うとおり弐 1 Kami-sama no Iu toori Ni 1 . It has plenty it desperately wants to say but it goes about it clunkily, even if it has streamlined the animal facts better, integrating it with the action proper.
The sunk-cost fallacy has claimed me, I'm afraid...also, few manga are more fun to review, that much is true. And a very small part of me admires the commitment it takes to still be pounding at this, when it is like a fever dream you had once on shrooms. A lot of silly sci-fi movies in this line abound but this is a manga that has been running since 2011 (!) and is still ongoing. That is over ten years of that image you saw above (I will not scar anyone with more of those...!), quite a few bulkier and scarier, many with added appendages salvaged from humans that were, in their turn, surgically altered. One of the duo fell ill, at one point, leading to a hiatus but that is still a lot of Gori-roaches and struggling to keep a plot afloat. Afraid of being seen as a plotless mess, they ran in the opposite direction, as if in the crushing arms of a spider Gori-roach, by multiplying plots, and subplots, without much of a hope of tying it all together.
I can almost hear the writer screaming into the void that "It'S MeaNINgFUl!!!" while the artist keeps at it, going through untold oceans of ink, to bring us the silliest- yet horrifying- critters that are, Terraformars.
500 years pass and a team of sods- I mean, a manned mission- is sent to exterminate the overflow of roaches, now that they have served their purpose. Except, it turns out that the cockroaches have evolved into what I dub Gori-roaches, seen in all their glory here:
Despite being ripped, monstrous, huge and not at all within what the crew was led to expect, the two idiots who stumble on one of these critters decides to have a chat. In English. Because I suppose Gori-roaches would not understand Japanese. She gets promptly killed, starting the manga's tradition of Fridging Its Women.
What follows is a fight to the death between the human crew, who has been subjected to a brutal surgery that adds insect DNA, and must activate it via injections. Pretty much everyone dies, except the lead, Komachi and this Hiruma guy.
Twenty more years roll over and a virus from Mars is killing people left and right and in order to make a vaccine, another manned mission- this time more prepared (I mean...kinda)- is sent, as live samples of the Gori-roaches is required.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything and anything.
Terraformars seems to be an amalgamation of influences, it tries very hard to emulate Attack on Titan, the franchise that made intelligent super violence mainstream and even a cultural phenomenon- while lacking the brains to pull it off- while winking at the likes of Gantz and maybe even old sci-fi creature features.
As far as the gore and violence go, it is usually extremely good and this is, by far, the manga's greatest strength. Anyone can write "and thousands of Gori-roaches are shredded into bits by Cool Dude with Insect-and-by-now-other-animal-Power sweeps through, limbs flying all over, hell yeah!" but it does take a lot of talent to actually draw and give it a sense of rapid movement. Action manga is not always appreciated for the effort it requires. In order to make static images read as not just moving but moving at a great pace, a mangaka needs to hone their skill, often for years on end and not everyone can vividly render inner organs bursting and the like.
With all this said, Terraformars is full of "wtf". It is full of sameness, with characters blending together, leans so heavily into national clichés that it becomes painful, insists on telling us the bra size of each female character (I am not making this up) and you can tell just when a named one is about to die because we will have a flashback sequence. Done once, or even twice, and the reader can still be kept on the edge of their seats but all too soon it becomes obvious. This is a trope but one this manga overindulges in.
At this point, the ship has been attacked by Gori-roaches even before it lands, it has crashed but is operational; all crew people have escaped, divided into squads, each one under the control of an officer. The squads are: 1, Japan lead by Komachi; 2, US, lead by Michelle; 3, Russia, led by Asimov; 4, China, led by Liu; 5, Germany, led by Adolf (his love interest is...Eva. I am not making this up either); 5, Rome (don't ask), led by Joseph.
The idea is that each squad will escape in opposite directions, making it harder for the Gori-roaches to kill them all (a rare case of intelligence), capture live samples and then convene back at the ship/research facility.
Except, oh no, the Chinese have betrayed everyone! Who could have seen this coming?! In a Japanese work of fiction? Color me surprise.
Now, I am, perhaps, not being fair. The representation of Chinese characters in 2D is diverse- very often gauche and not exactly well done, either- and what we see here just so happens to be the tippy point of the most extreme gradients on a wide spectrum.
If I were to qualify Chinese characters in 2D, I would say a very common theme is their intelligence. Chinese characters are hard to read, they scheme, smile at your face while preparing your sure and painful demise, and have a million plans going at the same time. They look ahead and can be extremely cold. They range from villains with not a shred of redemption, to morally ambiguous by definition (Wang from Gundam 00, Lao from Black Butler, Count D from Little Shop of Horrors are the go-to examples but I'm sure there are more) to truly heroic (almost every Chinese character in D. Gray Man but Kamui stands out as for all his whacky ways, he is most definitely a schemer).
I am unsure how these characteristics got agglutinated together and it is entirely possible there are many titles I am unaware of that explode these expectations altogether (for example, there are recent entries that take place in China, like 薬屋のひとりごと 1 Kusuriya no Hitorigoto 1 , very likely to do away with this if only because no one stands out as "the Chinese" characters) but that it is a recurring feature of sorts, and one recognizable enough in its own right, is also true.
Terraformars does not break the mold. Its Chinese cast is by far the most savvy (unsure about Rome, that has barely appeared) and their plan within a plan, while apparently absolutely insane and evil, is actually thought out. It includes faking everyone's death which works out quite well as officially, they are an engineer troops and thus not that strong. Everyone in this major mission of a hundred people strong (I am unsure how many have been slaughtered by now, but we may be down to half) has a rank as to their animal powers. Liu's team is ranked very low, deceptively so, making everyone look down on them. It is clever and this manga is in dire, dire, dire need of truly clever characters.
Of course, there are more scheming squads around. The Russians have their whole side quest that includes searching the pyramids (oh yeah, the Gori-roaches built pyramids!) and investigating a Gori-God, or something; Rome has been mostly absent probably because of whatever it has in mind and has not shared with class; Japan is not exactly not trying to move in the dark even if its troops remain oblivious.
But still, when it comes to coolly enforcing a plan, the Chinese take the lead. If the manga were less wonky, not as full of demented decisions and brainlessly running into danger because RAR!!! then I am sure the reader might hate the Chinese for this. I do not. I appreciate that they have steps thought up ahead, that they are going through, changing their strategy according to circumstance.
I mean, the women are not taking a shower, on their own, in a planet infested with giant roaches hellbent on killing humans...as has actually happened. DO. NOT. DO. THIS. AND. EXPECT. ME. TO. CARE.
This volume also goes some way to showing the Chinese crew more as people as opposed to "WE BE THE VILLAINS, WE LOVE EEET!" as has been the case up to this point. It is not enough, though...but let us not forget that this a manga that gave us Adolf and Eva.
Oh the subject of intelligence, one has a feeling that the creators have a bone to pick in this regard. You see, while the manga is known abroad- if it is known at all, that is- as brainless entertainment, this mangaka/artist duo have ambitions. The manga has quoted actual history books, gone into the importance of the net in human civilization, delved into entomology every other chapter so that the insect abilities can be explained and recently, has expanded this into biology writ larger once other animals came into play. There is a long sequence in which fighting is juxtaposed with Genesis (the arcane language making it a struggle) and we get extremely long names, like this: [全危険区域救助及び戦闘用防御甲冑 [マン・ザ・シェル]], obscure terms for animals like this [銀河蝦虎魚], that actually look and in some cases will only get you hits in...Chinese.
Maybe this is why the creators decided that Chinese people are just smarter than everyone else, look at the all the characters! We do that as well, we'll seem smart! Yeah...!
It is probably worth reminding readers that TF would very likely not exist if not Attack on Titan, a beautifully crafted story, with such impressive worldbuilding as to give one pause, and also featuring naked giant monsters killing people in very graphic ways. Of course, AoT became an international hit, and TF is only popular in Japan. I expect the creators were, on some level, compelled to imbue their own story with layers.
Unfortunately, the layers tend to be a lot of vague vagueness. This seems more EVA-like, with its council of vagueness (although this is an anime thing, too), with a lot being deliberately kept from the reader, only alluded too obliquely in between splatter, in the hopes of keeping them interested enough to count as foreshadowing.
The target audience can probably enjoy this more freely, not having to hit the dictionary but even here, I suspect it will have to do if it wants to know the animals in question. This is not common knowledge, at all, but borderline lore. But it can turn off its brain more readily and ride the wild, wild, wild ride in ways that I cannot. Part of it is just my personality, I will roll my eyes at "HeLlO? heLLO!" as idiots make their way into the darkest, most isolated places entirely on their own. So in a very real sense, I am not the target audience.
It goes without saying that you should probably not bother with this. At all. Off the top of my head, there are about half a dozen hyper violent titles that are superior in very single regard. Even when it comes to weirdness, Gantz, I think, has it beaten by far, along with 神さまの言うとおり弐 1 Kami-sama no Iu toori Ni 1 . It has plenty it desperately wants to say but it goes about it clunkily, even if it has streamlined the animal facts better, integrating it with the action proper.
The sunk-cost fallacy has claimed me, I'm afraid...also, few manga are more fun to review, that much is true. And a very small part of me admires the commitment it takes to still be pounding at this, when it is like a fever dream you had once on shrooms. A lot of silly sci-fi movies in this line abound but this is a manga that has been running since 2011 (!) and is still ongoing. That is over ten years of that image you saw above (I will not scar anyone with more of those...!), quite a few bulkier and scarier, many with added appendages salvaged from humans that were, in their turn, surgically altered. One of the duo fell ill, at one point, leading to a hiatus but that is still a lot of Gori-roaches and struggling to keep a plot afloat. Afraid of being seen as a plotless mess, they ran in the opposite direction, as if in the crushing arms of a spider Gori-roach, by multiplying plots, and subplots, without much of a hope of tying it all together.
I can almost hear the writer screaming into the void that "It'S MeaNINgFUl!!!" while the artist keeps at it, going through untold oceans of ink, to bring us the silliest- yet horrifying- critters that are, Terraformars.
December 5, 2015
This is an interesting series, with one flaw (other than the cockroaches). It is EXTREMELY difficult to follow what is going on. I cannot tell the characters apart, at all, and there are so many of them. Plus there is some corrupt government situations going on.
I would rate this series higher, but I am having a hard time fully following it. It's worth a read though!
I would rate this series higher, but I am having a hard time fully following it. It's worth a read though!
March 9, 2023
The story is improving and explains the dumb stuff at the start but visual clarity is a bit rough and character introduction is questionable. Still great though
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