Helen: Sazan’s life is typical for a blue collar worker — typical for his time that is. He lives on Earth but commutes to outer space for alien construction projects and while he gets a lot of satisfaction out of the job it isn’t an exciting one and the work is pretty routine.
That is, until he meets a strange, alien woman riding a motorbike and wearing a bikini (no spacesuit!) in outer space and she’s pretty cute. Sazan learns that she is Mina, the legendary “Comet Girl” that has been pursued by nearly every civilization in existence for the seemingly limitless power she can produce, but to Sazan she’s just a nice girl he’d like to go steady with, pirates and bounty hunters be damned.
The most remarkable thing about Sazan & Comet Girl is easily the art. It’s a rare full-color manga release and the art style, designs, and coloring are all reminiscent of an older age of science-fiction. It isn’t the most stunning manga I’ve seen this year by a long shot — the composition (both within the panels and across the page) is rather staid and both the environmental and character designs feel very familiar without a ton of innovation — but I did quite like a lot of the color work for it’s novelty and especially how it portrayed Mina’s powers.
However, while a full-color manga is unusual, I’m used to reading full-color webcomics and such so that detail alone isn’t going to sway my impression of a story. And frankly, I was unsurprised yet disappointed at how rote and formulaic this story was: it fits the “boy meets cooler girl, boy has to save cooler girl” template quite neatly and doesn’t add any interesting twists, details, or interpretations to that story. While the art might remind me of science fiction from a generation or two back, the story isn’t nearly as wild and strange as the American sci-fi from the 80s and 90s that I grew up reading and I just felt rather bored reading this. It is difficult to give characters a lot of depth and nuance in a one volume work, even a 500 page omnibus like this, but Yuriko Akase’s writing felt very inexperienced and like they were trying too hard to lean on comedic moments to avoid diving deeper into their characters.
If you happen to find a copy of this at the library it’s certainly worth paging through, even checking out, for the art but that’s about it. I was left with a feeling that felt very similar to when I check out many full-color webcomics — while the visuals were great, it just seemed like a shame that the writing couldn’t match it.
Helen’s rating: 2.5 out of 5
Justin: Sazan & Comet Girl will stand as one of the most memorable reads of 2020 for me. Yes, it was nominated for the Manga Taisho Award last year so I knew there was much to look forward to, but the premise seems innocuous enough if you don’t add in its full-color nature — Sazan is a construction worker who does odd jobs in space. He misses the last rocket back to Earth, and, while having to brace sleeping in the station’s envirobubble, a young woman on a space bike stops by and offers him a ride back home.
Soon enough, that kicks off a pretty wild tale.
Now it is important to note the full-color aspect because that is one of the appealing draws of this manga. In short, it works 95% of the time. There were a couple pages in the 500-page read where the process from converting it into print didn’t quite work (and thus some pages don’t look crisp or pop like other pages). Otherwise, there’s a lot of care placed on what’s in watercolor, how the planets and ships are drawn, and every action set piece throughout the read. Chances are you’ll find some really gorgeous moments at some point. Could be a hectic battle with lasers blasting or one particularly powerful being throwing a part of her hair at a ship and destroying it.
The story manages to be compelling about halfway through the omnibus. Mina, the person Sazan eventually realizes is the supposed Harbinger of Disaster, Comet Girl, has been living a life on the run throughout the cosmos, but all it takes is running into some ordinary human for her to start learning that there can be someone in her life that can be a friend. Sazan ends up getting caught in her troubles though, as she’s known all around for having extreme amounts of energy stored within her body. That means she has many people chasing her, such as the Picnic Pirates, led by a pig named Kidd who totally made me think of Zenigata as he recounts his failures in capturing Mina. It could be other pirates in space, who go through hell and high water to try and get her energy.
Or it could be a long-time pursuer of Mina’s bent on using her energy for something more destructive than what anyone else has planned. It’s never been easy to capture her because her powers are pretty broad, but at one point, you have enough pursuers and it might be enough to wear you down. That’s where Sazan comes in and attempts to be that difference maker…this may include making irrational decisions and starting unlikely partnerships.
However, it’s past that halfway part where the manga takes a really unique turn. Like, you open the book and the first page you see kind of reminds you of a movie poster? Something along those lines happen and it’s at times amusing, and at times emotional, as you somehow have an audience beside you trying to see if Sazan and Mina can make it. Aside from that spin, we get into what these beings — from Mina to Kidd to an enemy that turned out to be teased about a third of the way into the manga — really wanted to accomplish, but whether it was due to how they were treated or the harsh realities of life, they either couldn’t achieve it or lost their way.
The pacing of this is sublime — a long omnibus you would sometimes be motivated to take a slight breather, but I had to know if Sazan would be able to fix Mina’s bike at one point or watch Kidd and his crew finally seize the chance to capture Mina, but instead they watch Sazan and Mina talk through their situation…and only emerge after Sazan mentions them, in order: “Porker, Lizard-head, Obligatory Mascot.” They’re not a checklist! And towards the end you kind of feel like you emerged from a well-told, very drama heavy space opera.
Now, whether it fulfills that part, I’m not too sure. It’s certainly light on that front so if you’re wanting a stronger space opera, this is not it. But it is a comfortable read for the most part. And by the end of Sazan & Comet Girl, it was hard to not think of this as a terrific romp in the stars. Whether you check this manga out digitally or in print, it’s super worth your time and energy.
Justin’s rating: 5 out of 5