By Keiko Takemiya, story by Ryu Mitsuse (Vertical)
Book 1 ISBN: 978-1-932234-84-8, Book 2 ISBN: 978-1-932234-85-5, Book 3 ISBN: 978-1-934287-04-0
Keiko Takemiya is one of the most revered women working in Japanese comics. Her Kaze to Ki No Uta (an adaptation of Gilbert Cocteau’s The Poem of the Wind and the Trees) which appeared in 1976 is considered the first ever Shounen-ai (young men’s love strip) and the progenitor of that entire genre. Born in 1950, she sold her first work in 1968, working in not just romance and girl’s stories but also science fiction in a grand and epic manner.
This brief series from 1980-1982 has some overtones of Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker novels, and tells the epic generational tale of humanity’s struggle against encroaching and relentless mechanisation by sentient machines programmed to domesticate and protect Man from all threats – especially himself.
On the idyllic and spiritual world of Astria, Cosmoralian Prince Ithaca is preparing to marry Princess Lilia when an irresistible mechanical invasion force arrives, programmed to overwhelm and eradicate organic life.
Despite heroic opposition The Enemy inexorably assimilates the human population, and Lilia is forced to flee with her newborn son Prince Jimsa to the desert wastes. There he grows to young manhood surviving ravening wild beasts, bandits and grim adversity, sharpening the immense powers he has developed as the culminating point of three extremely special bloodlines.
And somewhere a twin sister he knows nothing about also matures…
The third volume begins with the siblings eventual meeting, carries through to the final fate of Astria and goes on to encompass the intergalactic destiny of the entire human race.
Staggering in scope, this fantasy thriller has classical overtones (and a chilling metaphorical message picked up in James Cameron’s Terminator movie a few years later) delivered in an engagingly florid and poetic style. Working with prose science fiction legend Ryu Mitsuse, Takemiya blazed a trail with this tale and it’s a pleasure to finally see it in an accessible English edition.
© 2008 Keiko Takemiya. Translation © 2008 Magnolia Steele and Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.