Nel futuro l'umanità, dopo aver prosciugato la Terra di tutte le sue risorse, si ritrova costretta a emigrare verso le colonie cosmiche. Cede allora il controllo della società a un sistema computerizzato, che ne indirizza ogni aspetto della vita e con spietata efficienza elimina tutto ciò che ritiene una minaccia. Come i Mu, umani con poteri telepatici obbligati a vivere in fuga, che desiderano una sola cosa: tornare verso la Terra...
Keiko Takemiya (竹宮惠子), earlier known as 竹宮恵子 (note: it's the first kanji in her given name, 恵→惠) is a Japanese mangaka.
She is one of the 24-Gumi (Magnificent 49ers), the group of female manga artists that pioneered the shoujo genre. Professor of manga studies at Kyoto Seika University.
La sensei Takemiya si getta nello shonen dopo aver passato un decennio a disegnare shojo e sforna comunque un capolavoro parlando di temi ancora attuali come diversità, segregazione, razzismo e libertà... in un ambiente fantascientifico! L’autrice ha uno stile descrittivo e di disegno che si confà ai gusti anni Settanta ed è meglio non approcciare con disattenzione l’opera perché ogni particolare va gustato.
I am enjoying this sci-fi melodrama in ways I didn't foresee. K. Takemiya's pages are as strangely built as they first appear -- panels angled like toppling dominoes, figures crossing with impunity from one panel into an adjacent one, widescreen bleeds evoking the vastness of space, and continuous overlapping, with no visual element being impermeable to any other -- but the bigger joy is how well-suited this chaos is to the story it tells. This is that rare experimental comix narrative whose experiments do not seem thought-out, but also aren't a mess. The permeability of panels, figures, backgrounds, balloons, and sound effects can be enjoyed as pure comix; but it can also be understood as the natural expression of a universe in which telepaths are the next stage of human evolution. I like messes (Al Columbia, Josh Cotter, C.F.); and I like the more labored, intellectual strain of experimentation that seems to be happening a lot in comix right now (Ware, Mazzucchelli, Dash Shaw); but To Terra belongs in a third category, which we might call incidental formalism, wherein visual strangeness is dictated and informed by genre requirements. How would you draw a sentient computer? How would you draw a mutant reading the mind of a human? Takemiya's answers are far different from those of anyone who has ever drawn the X-Men -- more mysterious and open-ended, sexually charged/damaged/innocent in a way that is absurdly Japanese yet still her own, and surprisingly personal and emotional. There's a lot of corn in here, and none of the characters thus far strike me as alive, but Takemiya's hundreds of casual innovations and her powerful sense of style animate the whole work and give the illusion that I am witnessing the artist's mind's eye directly. She's a genius.
La humanidad ha abandonado la tierra. En el exilio, se ha establecido una nueva orden (Superior Dominion) y tratan de rehacer la humanidad en un molde que pueda vivir en armonía con la Terra. Los humanos crecen en úteros artificiales, se crían en colonias y las escuelas las dirigen unas computadoras llamadas Madres. Cuando llegan a la pubertad, una prueba les hace pasar a la siguiente etapa de su educación. Aquí arranca Destino Terra, cuando el joven Jomy Marquis esta a punto de pasar esa prueba. Sin embargo, hay un subconjunto de la humanidad, los Mu, que nacen con una sensibilidad psíquica especial. Y todo parece indicar, según su líder, que Jomy Marquis es uno de ellos. Sin embargo, será un Mu diferente al resto.
Es impresionante como el primer volumen de Destino Terra plantea TANTO en solo unas cuantas paginas. Es una obra lenta, de construcción de mundo y sobre todo, de personaje. En este primer volumen, tenemos dos tramas bien diferenciadas. El camino de los Mu desde la vista de Jomy, y el camino de los humanos por el control de Terra. Ambos están destinados a encontrarse, pero en este primer volumen solo se rozan. Ambos liderados por jóvenes carismáticos, en una mezcla entre ciencia ficción setentera, esoterismo y una historia con mucha más política de la que uno puede esperar.
El arte, con sus característica setenteras, es fabulosamente extraño. Takemiya experimenta y construye paginas con paneles en ángulos extraños, con figuras que cruzan paneles o panorámicas increíbles. Los elementos visuales son una maravilla, crean un imaginario propio y dejan entrever que lo que resta en los dos volúmenes restantes de Destino Terra… todavía pueden ser mucho más potentes.
Le tenía muchas ganas y aún es mejor de lo que pensaba. Cuando lees un argumento siempre te haces una idea de por dónde irán los tiros, pero esta mujer siempre ofrece algo que está mucho más allá. Incorpora elementos como el control de la población mediante la manipulación de la información y una sociedad hipertecnológica.
So it's the future (yay!) and humanity has screwed up the Earth beyond recognition (boo!) To rectify their mistake, humanity as a whole decides to leave the planet temporarily and let it heal itself. While they're in exile, they set up a new order, Superior Dominion, with all dates being given in the years SD since the revitalization of Terra began.
As the name implies, Superior Dominion isn't all roses and puppy dogs. In order to remake humanity in a mould that can live in harmony with Earth, SD has abandoned the natural order. Humans are grown in artificial wombs on colony worlds throughout the galaxy. When they're decanted, the babies are raised by specially selected foster parents and attend highly regimented schools run by computers called Mothers. As the children reach puberty, they're given tests to see if they're able to pass on to the next stage, where most of their memories of childhood are erased and they're sent to space stations to complete final brainwashing -- er, indoctrination.
There's one flaw with the system. The Mother computers are designed with psychic powers to monitor children and make sure they're developing properly. But there's a certain subset of humanity, the Mu, who are born with their own psychic powers. Normally these are latent powers and rarely manifest, but the computers' psionic fields often unlock the powers in children. As such, SD thoroughly tests children to sieve out the Mu.
The first half of the book tells of Jomy Marcus Shin, a Mu who's avoided detection until just short of his fourteenth birthday, when he's scheduled to move on to the next phase of his training. A group of rebel Mu detect his powers and plot to rescue him. Seems he has the potential to become the most powerful Mu ever, and they want to make him their leader. But first they have to convince Jomy to join them.
The second part focuses on Keith Anyan, another young man who's completing his final education on space station E-1077. Keith has been singled out as one of the elites who will lead humanity on the recolonized Earth, but he's developed doubts about SD -- doubts that he hides for fear of what Mother would do if she found out. He encounters Seki Ray Shiroe, a recent arrival on the station who harbors the same doubts but is less circumspect about expressing, and Shiroe encourages him to investigate the truth.
These two plotlines are obviously heading for a collision, but here in the first volume they only lightly graze each other. Truth be told, the story is a throwback to the American pulps of the '50s -- John Campbell would love this series (provided you didn't tell him the author was a Japanese woman) -- with a glaze of Japanese esotericism -- a combo that works surprisingly well. Still, story isn't the book's strong suit. It's entertaining but awfully silly in places.
No, the real star here is the artwork. Though you can definitely see signs that this was written in the 1970s (The hair! Dear God, the hair!), the designs still look beautiful, particularly once the story heads into space. It's obvious that Takemiya saw Star Wars at some point while writing this (you can spot R2-D2 in the background of one scene) and was influenced in her depictions of spaceships. Vertical wisely published this series in a larger size than is typical for manga, so you can really enjoy the detail she put into the drawings.
First off let me say that I don't like graphic novels, especially manga, just because I have a hard time reading backwards and most of the stories are just too bizarre and, well, stupid. (Please no one hate me for saying that - just an opinion)
But I will say, I was pleasantly surprised by this manga. After retraining my brain to read right to left, I actually saw that this manga was intriguing and even relevant in a future sense of humanity polluting earth to the point of it no longer being life sustaining. This is a sci-fi manga where almost all of humanity is shipped off earth to other planets and space stations, where babies are created in labs and fostered out, and where at age 14, children go through 'maturity' checks that place them in the hierarchy of human society and erase the memories gained in those first 14 years. Only the elite, may return to Terra (earth), where independence is valued above all else and no emotional attachments are made to anything or anyone except Terra.
I was fascinated by this manga, and the Mu (have to read it to find out what this is) and would recommend this to any teen who likes graphic novels or wants to dabble in it. This is a good manga for just about any age group, and though the pictures are all black and white, the dialogue and story line work really well together. There are a few story tracks within the manga that come together in the end and those teens that feel they are different or who want to be different from the mainstream would really like this manga.
Leer clásicos del manga de ciencia ficción escritos por mujeres me está encantando. Ya había llegado alguna cosa a España de moto Hagio que me había gustado mucho y ahora Milky Way ha publicado Destino Terra de Takemiya y las sensaciones son muy positivas. Ver la visión que tenían ya en Japón en los años setenta sobre el progreso humano, la evolución de los sistemas políticos y el agotamiento de los recursos naturales es chocante. Es una obra lenta, pero por el mundo que desarrolla vale muchísimo la pena.
Mais quelle surprise ! Je n'aurais jamais cru lire un manga aussi subversif par une autrice japonaise. Il y a beaucoup d'informations dans ce premier tome, la mise en place est un peu longue mais aussi très prenante. Graphiquement, le trait a le charme rétro des manga des 70s, il y a de belles planches dont la mise en page est parfois à la limite du psychédélique. Et quel dommage que les pages couleur soient en noir et blanc. Une belle découverte et très hâte de lire la suite.
To Terra has that sort of classic anime feel that just tells you it's from decades back. It follows very much in the style I expect from Osamu Tezuka's works -- a lot of interesting world building, a plot that sometimes seems to resolve itself a little too easy but at other times becomes sort of knotty and difficult to follow.
The story is about a future where humans wrecked the world with pollution, and so the powers that be decided that humans had to be fixed. Otherwise, fixing the world would be pointless because it would only be wrecked again. Babies are created, given to designated parents, and raised until they're 14. Then they have their maturity test and are, if they pass, sent onward for training and eventual relocation to Terra. But some of them are Mu -- humans with psychic powers -- and the fate for those people is not good.
The story is about the growing unease -- from the mu who escaped humanity and from the people within the system who don't agree with how it's being carried out.
I kind of loved the art in this. It gave a real sense of scale and scope, which is vital in a huge space opera like this. Unfortunately, for me at least, the story didn't hold up. Not overall -- it was an interesting premise and I liked a lot of the characters -- but there were just times when it lulled to the point where it almost lost me completely.
I don't think I'll probably ever move on in this one. It was pretty good, but definitely not to my taste overall.
Je venais pour l’esthétique SF 70’ écrite par des meufs mais l’histoire est super bien en fait, ça a très bien vieilli. La série complète est en 3 tomes, faut juste que je fouine un peu pour trouver la suite. Update : ok c’est réédité en français cette année!
3.5*stars. Far in the future is the utopian educational plant of Ataraxia, where we meet, Jomy Marcus Shin, a bold, emotional boy in a world full of Obedient, monotone people. Having almost destroyed Tara, the planet humans called home for so long. They moved to another and developed the superior domination, S.D., system of social control in which children are not born but are the progeny of a universal computer, and Ataraxia is where children are trained to become sensible, (emotionless,) logical adults. But not Jomy. On his 14th birthday, the day of his awakening, where he was meant to become a compliant citizen, he discovers he is not actually the human race, but a by-product of SD, he is a Mu, a mutant race of human that cannot be controlled by the universal computer due to their strong telepathy and emotional connections. This is the story of how he not only changes the world, but a whole Galaxy.
Wow, that is a long synopsis, but it is needed because while things start off slow detailing a bit of background of the world, things soon take off and the fun begins. There is much to be explained, but thankfully, it's not overly wordy. However, the beginning introduction does get repeated at one point, which on the surface felt repetitive, but needed as a reminder, a lot had happened since the beginning.
Even though this was one volume it was formatted into 3 parts, the second part started off like a whole other story with a new main character - Keith - but by the end, things finally came back around and the side trip following Keith made sense to the story as a whole instead of starting a second adventure while we were already. Just starting another.
I'm normally not good at telling genres, but this is definitely a space opera. As someone who has not enjoyed many of those in book format, I recommend To Terra since this made me excited to try another sci-fi manga series set in space.
In the unspecified future, the home planet of human beings which has been renamed Terra, became inhabitable. The air was polluted, fish could no longer swim in the oceans or rivers, trees would no longer grow, and non-degradable toxins had built up underground. Humans searched the far reaches of space for a new home, but were never able to find a new Terra. Eventually they came to the conclusion that Terra wasn't the problem, humans were. The decision was made to reform humanity and a system was put in place to raise humans in a new way.
Having handed control of humanity's course over to a computer called "Mother", children are born in test tubes and raised by designated parents. They are given an ideal and loving upbringing until the age of 14. It is at that point when all children must undergo the maturity evaluation. Those who pass have the majority of their memories erased and are sent to an educational space-station to complete their preparation to return to Terra. By the opening of this epic science-fiction graphic novel, there are rumblings of discontent in this seemingly perfect system.
In the first volume of this trilogy from Keiko Takemiya, two storylines emerge, destined for a collision as the series progresses. Conflict between the Mu (human mutants with telepathic powers) and humans over control of Terra and the fate of humanity has begun with both sides being led by charismatic young leaders determined to secure the safety of their way of life. Outstanding art helps prop up this story whose text is a little too vague at times.
Sci-fi trilogy about a future when Man has mostly left Earth because we've polluted it so badly, and now humanity allows a computer designed to keep them docile and in-line. Many humans develop telepathic powers, and are called Mu rather than human, and were killed for many generations, until a few escaped and began to rescue all the future Mu. This leads to a war, a ultrapowerful Mu who wants to reunite with humanity, and the Mu trying to get back to Earth. The leader of the humans was genetically engineered by the computer to resist telepathy.
It's kinda vague at times, one of my complaints with some fantasy/sci-fi manga, and the characters don't have any really strong character arcs other than their role as plot-movers. Some of the characters' relationships are confused and difficult to follow. Still, it's got some pretty entertaining sequences, including a few characters trying to learn secrets about their pasts, and the conflict is pretty well realized. The art is solid. Overall... dunno... it was all right, not a favorite, but not anything I regret reading.
I don't know anything really about this author and just picked up the first volume by chance at the library because I wanted something sci-fi and outerspace-y. I don't read a whole lot of modern manga either so I'm not one to judge the style or story compared with other manga from the 2000s, but I found this story very ambitious, maybe even a little too much so. I think the story is interesting enough, about a group of sem-humans that have telepathic abilities and are shunned by the regular humans because of it. I found it a little overly dramatic and somewhat boring at times. Maybe because the basic plot is a little cliché- humans expelled themselves from earth because of pollution and then decided to return to it after a renewal period. Or maybe I found it boring because the characters don't seem very appealing, they're cold or don't seem relatable or they overreact to everything. I think the Mu story by itself is more compelling. I don't know if I'll read the next volume but probably will because, quarentine!
Пускай первый том не оставил восторженного впечатления, серию буду читать до конца. Потому что в основе тут оторванные от матушки Земли люди, принимающие за человечество решения супер-машины, тотальный контроль мыслей и действий, две фракции с единой целью да ожидание неминуемой трагедии.
История мальца, который будущий спаситель галактики и т.д., поначалу напоминала героическую тему для среднего школьного. Ты избранный, только сам пока этого не понимаешь. Пойдем с нами, тебе суждено спасти весь народ. У тебя есть супер-силы, способные перевернуть мироздание и т.д. Понятно, почему моя рука потянулась сделать фейспалм? Совсем не такой я себе представляла нахваливаемую космическую оперу. Но во втором акте акцент сместился на противоположную сторону конфликта и раскрыл персонажа, за которым было неподдельно интересно следить. И я даже не о втором главном герое, которого в будущем явно будут противопоставлять оппозиции. А о катализаторе событий всей арки (Seki Ray Shiroe). Тот случай, когда второстепенные персонажи вызывают больше отклика, чем основные. А финал этого тома так вообще настолько эмоционально заряжен, что у меня еще 5 минут в ушах звенело.
Cовершенно не мой рисунок. Да, я залипала на некоторых страницах, и даже возвращалась на несколько назад, потому что воплощение какой-то концепции или даже просто задник увлекли воображение и невозможно двигаться дальше, пока не поймешь «как это работает», как так искусно тень играет в прятки со светом, создавая из нарисованного целое полотно. Но в целом не смогла перешагнуть через отрицание рисунка образца 1977 года, сорри.
En un futuro lejano, la humanidad ha agotado los recursos naturales, y se ve obligada a dejar atrás la tierra, para intentar rehacer la sociedad, en una nueva sociedad controlada por las máquinas. En este mundo empiezan a surgir una nueva especie de humanos, los MU, con amplios poderes telepáticos, que suponen un peligro para el régimen establecido.
El dibujo de Takemiya es magistral, y acompaña una historia que despega mostrándonos diferentes personajes atormentados por su destino, y los recuerdos del pasado (o la falta de ellos).
Me gusta pero no sé si lo continuaré. Sin duda, lo que más me atrae es el debate ético que hay. Libre albedrío y libertad de pensamiento vs. Control mental y manipulación por parte de las máquinas con tal de alcanzar un objetivo. Ahora bien, el tema de las naves se me hace muy pesado. Una pena, por qué creo que hay personajes interesantes. En fin, no sé qué haré.
L'univers très particulier de cette SF rend parfois le récit un poil difficile à suivre (en toute honnêteté, les noms des personnages n'aident pas non plus), mais on a tout de même un récit dystopique assez prenant, de bons personnages et des questionnements sur, entre autres, l'identité, la mémoire ou encore l'écologie déjà bien présents, hâte de lire la suite!
Tämä on varmasti vanhinta mangaa, jota olen tähän mennessä lukenut. To Terra on nimittäin alun perin julkaistu vuosien 1977-80 aikana. Piirrostyylissä iän paikoin huomaakin, ja siitä tulee mieleen mm. Mœbiuksen sarjakuvat. Idealtaan tämä on säilynyt hyvin ajattomana.
Le tome est épais, il contient plusieurs parties, chacune abordant un aspect important de cette histoire dans un futur lointain où des humains, qui comptent fortement sur les ordinateurs pour mener leur vie, s'opposent vivement aux Mu, des personnes avec des compétences télépathiques "qui contrôlent mal leur émotivité".
Ce tome 1 est divisé en plusieurs parties clairement identifiées: un prologue qui nous plonge dans l'époque et la motivation principale (rejoindre Terra); ensuite l'intégration difficile de Jomy chez les Mu ; puis les doutes et tracas de Keith suite à sa rencontre avec un autre élève d'élite (on est alors chez les humains). Avant de retourner à ce qui arrive aux Mu... C'est donc un récit qui se déploie dans le temps, avec des personnages forts que la mangaka prend le temps de développer, avec toutes leurs contradictions, ce qui nous les rend tout à la fois attachants et parfois détestables aussi!
Très franchement, je ne suis pas sortie indemne de cette lecture. Chaque partie est fluide, on peut la lire comme une aventure SF au premier degré... Puis quand on place le signet entre les pages, on réalise qu'on peut facilement plonger dans un 2e degré beaucoup plus profond. La première partie m'a fait m'interroger sur ce qui était préférable: être entièrement logique et rationnel (les humains contrôlés par les ordinateurs) ou laisser cours à la force de l'émotion (les Mu)? La deuxième partie s'interroge davantage sur la nature même des ordinateurs, est-ce acceptable de les laisser prendre les décisions étant donné la manière dont les humains n'ont pas su s'arrêter à temps pour sauver la Terre? À quoi a servi notre libre-arbitre si nous n'avons pas réussi à s'arrêter avant de tout empoisonner?
Le livre date de 1977, même s'il vient seulement d'être traduit en français (exceptionnelle traduction par ailleurs, bravo à Guillaume Hesnard). La mangaka est professeure à la Seika University de Kyoto, première université au Japon à avoir ouvert un programme pour former les mangakas. Elle a fait partie du mythique Groupe de l'an 24, des femmes ayant profondément marqué le monde du manga. Si le dessin est clairement de ce temps, évoquant Candy Candy et La Rose de Versailles de la même époque, les thèmes résonnent beaucoup avec aujourd'hui, ce qui m'a grandement surprise!
Un exemple très concret: au milieu de ce tome, dans le monde des humains géré par un ordinateur-mère dont on nous explique le fonctionnement, Keith se dit: "Alors même que vous devez tout lui dire quotidiennement... Vous vous étonnez encore qu'elle sache tout de vous." On dirait qu'ils nous parlent des algorithmes qui apprennent de nos clics, de nos "j'aime", de nos commentaires, du temps qu'on passe devant un image ou un vidéo, et qui nous présentent ensuite "ce dont on a besoin selon nos intérêts". Assez visionnaire d'avoir vu cela venir en 1977... Et pas très rassurant pour la suite!
J'ai très très hâte de lire les deux autres tomes!
I stumbled upon all three volumes of this series at the library, and decided to give it a go. Scifi, adventure, mystery, dystopian, yay!
Story: The futuristic society is interesting, the "Maturity Check" reminds me of ya-dystopian stories. I found this first part interesting, but kind of wished things would move along faster in the story. I don't know what to say: the mystery intrigues me (Terra, the Mu, what is really going on here?), but if I didn't have volume2 available straight away I might not continue reading (but because I've got it, I'll read the entire story).
Style: I'm not a fan of big-eyed characters, but the story matters most. The big black'n'white pictures are beautiful.
The idea is that in a fully computer-dependent society, and by that I mean on ONE particular computer, a group of psi-powered mutants (the Mu) have been exiled from society and for some reason think that going back to Terra will solve all their problems.
I liked this, but it's totally incomprehensible. All the characters are exactly the same except for the goals we're told they have, and those same informed goals are the only reason for the plot. The art, which is absolutely gorgeous on big sweeping starscapes and spaceships, is indecipherable in small panels. It takes forever for anything significant to happen, and when it does there seems to be no reason for it. Since none of the characters have any reasons for their beliefs, their actions just come across as juvenile and ill-informed. Every so often there's a time-out to try and explain some of the science involved, but that just makes it worse.
But, despite all that, I did like it. The atmosphere is mesmerizing, and if you just sort of relax and zone out while you read it becomes dreamscape-y rather than just confusing. It's an interesting look at some older sci-fi, where some common ideas are used as new and thrown together in unorthodox ways. It's sci-fi, but Takemiya tends to use fantasy in the workings of it. I certainly didn't get bored with it, as hard as I was working to follow the story.
There's this sudden flurry of action and energy and awesomeness at the end that makes the whole saga worth the trouble... And then an epilogue that plunged me back into misty confusion. So, if you don't really get what happened, neither do I. This is another one of those books that I'm not sure whether to recommend or not. If it sounds interesting then go ahead, knock yourself out, it's only three volumes.
This is kind of a slow-paced manga. This volume does a lot of world-building with regards to Terran society and Mu society, as well as our two leads views of their respective societies, Jomy Marcus Shin for the Mu, and Keith Anyan for the Terrans.
(This part may sound spoiler-ish, but it really isn't).
That said, thus far the story does a pretty good job of making the Terran society oppressive enough that you understand why the Mu rebelled, while also making the Terrans sympathetic - their society is oppressive, but it's a society that chose to become oppressive for a specific reason - to make a society that could remain cohesive in spite of humanity's diaspora to the stars, and could also remain united and focused on the task of restoring and repairing the damaged ecosystem of Earth - and would be in agreement on how to prevent it from being despoiled once again, after the planet had been rebuilt. Their greatest sin isn't practicing eugenics, or having a non-traditional family unit (though their attempts to eliminate emotions from society is definitely something I'd consider a bad thing), as much as their greatest sin is treating the Mu, because they're ESPers, and are therefore different, as freaks to be (essentially) dissected and studied, rather than as being human beings like everyone else, and putting humans over their order.
So, I'm definitely interested in reading future books, and seeing how this conflict goes down. This is definitely a situation where both sides are shades of grey, rather than the situation being black-and-white, and I look fore-ward to seeing this play out.
Got this out of one of my local library branches, and it was honestly kind of a mixed bag for me.
I was really in love with this on a visual level -- or at least, with the background settings, which feel like a gorgeously detailed mashup of every pre-Star Wars space epic. That SF setting -- harsh, inorganic largely free of the usual flower-covered shoujo visual tropes -- is part of what makes To Terra so remarkable to me. I honestly can't see any contemporary shoujo publication that I'm aware of taking on a manga that looked like this, or a storyline more concerned with the battle between individuals and a highly centralized state than with sexxi bishonen. More's the pity.
Where To Terra fails me is in storyline and character design. It's not that Takemiya doesn't have fun ideas; they're just not executed very well. The story is rife with timeskips and poorly fleshed-out motivations, and half the time I was left wondering what was happening and why. The protagonist, Jomy, starts out as a sympathetic kid in a horrible situation; by the end of the volume I found him almost completely changed and only marginally more interesting than Paul Atreides from Dune (aka My Most Hated.) Since this was the only volume my library had, I'm not sure if I'll continue with this series; at 3 volumes, it seems like a short investment of time and/or money to have at least finished reading a classic manga, but I'm not sure I care about these characters enough to continue with them.
Imagine that the humans virtually destroy the planet with all of their waste and pollution. What can be done? Well, humans living on the planet Terra find themselves in this exact predicament and decide to create species that are better than humans. In this first volume of graphic novels, young Jomy Shin must face the reality of coming of age in a world where any imperfection is intolerable. Jomy is special and with the help of soldier Blue, and other MU (those humans that have created their own world to maintain the human species) they want to continue life as humans, and forgo the socialization into becoming perfect humans capable of living on the planet.
I think that teenagers may really enjoy this, especially since Manga is so popular. The only downside is that this comic is really long. I had a hard time getting through this graphic novel, largely because I could not always follow what was going on. I am really impressed with teenagers ability to read this novels, because you really have to have an eye for all the detail that is presented in the illustration, if you overlook any of that you really miss a great bit of the story. I actually thought that the plot was pretty slow, and it took me a long time to get through it. I am curious to know what someone who really likes these novels thinks about this particular one
Its vintage and historical significance alone make To Terra… worth a look, but there’s much more to it than that. This book is a space opera in the grandest sense of the word, but by filtering this manliest of genres through Takemiya’s shojo sensibilities, the result is a fascinating hybrid. Takemiya’s heroes are so wispy that it looks like a strong wind might blow them away, but their slender limbs and softened features do little to deaden how fiercely she communicates their resolve as she serves up every tense scene with an extra dollop of melodrama. To Terra… certainly isn’t hurting for action-packed aerial dogfights, and when it comes time, Takemiya can draw technically flawless spaceships with the best of ‘em. She’s just as likely, though, to let the space scenery linger, with gorgeously rendered double-page spreads or long vertical panels that slash the page into pieces to help set the scene. In the art of To Terra…, atmosphere is key.