MARS: Horse With No Name

    (Tokyopop, 2004)
™ and © Fuyumi Soryo
Reads right to left; b&w

If you thought the story of bad boy biker Rei and shy arty girl Kira was over, well, you were right. But, even if you haven’t read the MARS (Tokyopop) series, this prequel gives you a chance to get in on it at the beginning, as you see how the young lovers first meet.

Fuyumi Sorvo has a remarkable gift of storytelling in a clean, clear style and a way of giving readers unlimited access to her characters’ innermost thoughts through the most subtle of visual clues. Moreover, while the three short stories presented here have to be classified as “romances,” Fuyumi favors a more austere variety of the genre than many may be used to. She focuses on honest emotion over syrupy sentiment and real conflict over artificial contrivances.

That’s very much in evidence, as readers fellow Rei on one of his more eventful nights on the town in which a song by a ’70s American musical group resonates with the action—it’s not just some random bit of “cool sounding” English.

— S.A. Bennett
Jump to issue:
  NotesWriterArtist