Devotion
08-23-2006, 09:59 AM
I found volume 1 of this manga at Barnes & Noble, and I started reading it. The art style vaguely reminds me of some American newspaper comics. I'm tempted to say Calvin & Hobbes for the somewhat fuzzy outline used for characters and objects. It's somewhat hard to read because of the blurring effect this introduces, and the fact that the text bubbles do not explicitly point to who is speaking, though some attempts are made to place the text bubbles close to the speaker.
Well, aesthetics aside, the plot appears to be the following: Some yet unspecified conflict devastated the Earth and allowed a fascist government to take over Japan and divide into districts called special wards. This unknown conflict apparently involve two types of aliens: an intelligent and organic species that look like SD octopi, and aliens that are essentially giant mecha that resemble abstractions of little girls. The girl mecha, called dolls, are used by the fascist government in some sort of conspiracy type plan that involves finding children--the main characters--to pilot them and be consumed as some sort of powering device and operating program.
It looks like it's shaping up to be another story in the Evangelion mold. I liked Eva, but only the first 20 or so episodes, and those for the mecha action, the suspenseful and episodic plot, and the nostalgia invoked in a childhood tokasatsu fan. Q-ko-chan doesn't look like it'll have the benefit of any of these. Some of it appears to be over-the-top parodies of animes of this archtype to boot, but if it is, it manages to fall into the rut of the anime it attempts to parody too quickly.
Anyone who has read more than 1 volume care to contribute?
Well, aesthetics aside, the plot appears to be the following: Some yet unspecified conflict devastated the Earth and allowed a fascist government to take over Japan and divide into districts called special wards. This unknown conflict apparently involve two types of aliens: an intelligent and organic species that look like SD octopi, and aliens that are essentially giant mecha that resemble abstractions of little girls. The girl mecha, called dolls, are used by the fascist government in some sort of conspiracy type plan that involves finding children--the main characters--to pilot them and be consumed as some sort of powering device and operating program.
It looks like it's shaping up to be another story in the Evangelion mold. I liked Eva, but only the first 20 or so episodes, and those for the mecha action, the suspenseful and episodic plot, and the nostalgia invoked in a childhood tokasatsu fan. Q-ko-chan doesn't look like it'll have the benefit of any of these. Some of it appears to be over-the-top parodies of animes of this archtype to boot, but if it is, it manages to fall into the rut of the anime it attempts to parody too quickly.
Anyone who has read more than 1 volume care to contribute?