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REVIEW: Terra Formars GN 7




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Forrest-kun



Joined: 09 Mar 2015
Posts: 34
PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:28 pm Reply with quote
Everything is sexist these days.
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Forrest-kun



Joined: 09 Mar 2015
Posts: 34
PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:31 pm Reply with quote
Also I didn't notice any problems with the bodies of the characters..hmmmm
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mickstack



Joined: 05 Nov 2014
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 1:42 pm Reply with quote
forrest-kun wrote:
Everything is sexist these days.


I assume that you are just being sarcastic, but really a lot of things have always been pretty sexist, it's just that people are starting to call it out now.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2652
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 2:16 pm Reply with quote
forrest-kun wrote:
Also I didn't notice any problems with the bodies of the characters..hmmmm


It was really the musculature that was off, I felt - and it certainly isn't an issue unique to this series. But it did bother me with its apparent addition of random arm muscles, so I mentioned it.
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2579
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Fri Aug 28, 2015 4:52 am Reply with quote
I was surprised how much the manga improved when i gave it a second chance last year and proceeded to write the amazon/MU review below. I wonder how the Takashi Miike movie will look like as he is insane enough to do the series justice but he will need to tweak the first arc and a half.

The "successor" to Gantz (8,5/10)
Gantz (8/10) may have been a bit problematic but it left a void in the market which Terra Formars so i jumped on board early on and immediately jumped off due to the messy introduction arc.
The series stuck with me though and i heard that the manga was up for an award, an anime (it is alright but a bit rushed and kind of strange) and now a movie.
I then decided to travel to Mars again and the second arc in Vol. 2 turned out to be an improvement on Vol.1 (the OVA) but it and the prequel chapter about the first mission are still essential reading as they form the backbone of the narrative, Don´t skip them even if both could used a rewrite.
My appreciation then grew volume by volume. An immediately noticeable strength is the clean and dynamic art by Kenichi Tachibana and his action scenes become better and better over time with the expansion of the highly varied cast. The animal metaphors and explanations, which relate to the powers employed, are all very interesting and the series is racially diverse to a degree that most Japanese publications don´t even strive too. I am a Afro-Russian German btw. Another noteworthy strength are the female characters (50% of the cast) and the way the author treats them.
There is nudity but it is tasteful and the manga goes for male one too by skipping easy setups for "fan-service" time and time again. Some of the women could use a slimmer breast size and the constant and highly interesting profiles mention every cup sizes but half of these are (good) jokes and some of the males get a few curios entries too, as their opinions on certain porn genres.
I thus i have no problem to call Terra Formars weirdly feministic. Fellow competitors as Hiroya Oku should take notes! Especially in the way this series handles death as you never know who will die.
All the deaths stick so this is truly series for adults and not a Shounen power trip as way too popular Seinen manga are. The use of violence is also well done as the author understands where to go big and where to go small by focusing on reaction shots of onlookers instead. The driving force of the narrative is actually a string of romances but damsels in distress won´t be found here. That cliché even gets inverted at time and the series even has a funny bone. I am never going to call any of this high art and i get some of the criticism but if you want to read a straightforward biopunk survival tale that is way better than it should be then stick around and just power though the early slumps.
The mass of comedy spin-offs is utterly unneeded but Terra Formars Gaiden - Rain Hard (7,5/10), about the tragic back story of ensemble dark horse Adolf, is quite good and more serious in-continuity side-stories could work. A current and even better teamwork focused manga would be Until Death Do Us Part (9,5/10) which excels with its gender balanced cast and racial diversity even more. Attack on Titan (8/10), Black Lagoon (8/10 but the anime is a bit better), Gunslinger Girl (9/10) and Tokyo Ghoul (8,5/10) are further quality action tales that can deliver characterization along with the violence. I can´t believe i am saying this but in the Nippon Bug i trust!
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