The Five Star Stories

    (Toypress, 2003)
™ and © Toypress

The Five Star Stories manga is mostly known in America as the comic book with the peculiarly contorted mobile battle suits (predating those from Evangelion by more than a decade) which ran in Japan’s Newtype magazine. So there’s a strange sort of symmetry at work that the same month gives us both the English language Newtype and the translated Five Star Stories.

But be warned: It has an involved plot without obvious good or bad guys and requires the reader to slog arduously through heaps of maps and techno-jargon (each page is festooned with footnotes) so they can understand what’s going on — which is entirely different from getting involved in the story. The background information in the back makes it more accessible, but the reader still feels as if he’s studying for a test, rather than reading a manga. Even when you “get” the backstory, it doesn’t make the characters any more interesting or the art less scratchy. Bottom line: It’s kinda like Dune, except with giant robots and cute android chicks; you might like it — or you might find it cool, distant, and dull.

— S.A. Bennett
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