Venus Wars

Rating:
Summary: An Underrated Comicbook, Well Worth Reading!
Review: A good read, and one of my favorites. A great deal of action, focusing on battle-motorcyles (given a legitimate reason to exist in the plot), but this is only a vehicle (pardon the pun) for more interesting emotional discoveries. Good art with real "movement", a real enough setting, a good heart, and an engaging plot line, where multiple characters (not just the hero) change and grow over the course of a painful war.

It is, however, not without its faults. At first glance this series is your typical teenage angst Japanese action comic. What is essential is to get beyond the cover, and the first quarter or so of the work. Here they are setting up the story, demonstrating the hero's wanderlust and apathy (and riding skill), and generally going on in a sort of late teen way about life, romance, and bizzare chance encouters. The writer isn't afraid to use some story telling cliches and relatively hammy sequences that frankly ring a little untrue to set up a story that, in the end, really pays off-- not from any originality per se, but from having a story that, as it progresses, becomes more and more raw, to the point, and emotionally honest.

The heart of "Venus Wars" is, to me, the relatively sophisticated coming of age story of the main hero. The story arc follows him from a path of apathy to honest emotional engagement in the war. This is the major reason I found the story interesting. The ecological and political aspects were also interesting and thought provoking-- they made the background feel "real" enough, demonstrating how the planet's atmosphere is being destroyed by the war, as well as the political ins and outs of an unstable country. At root though, the series is the simple story of a young man who didn't want to be involved learning that everyone is, that he _is_ involved-- in love, in ecology, in politics.

The B+W artwork is also quite good. Yasuhiko has a very sketchy, "fast" pen. This leads to broad, powerful penstrokes that give the artwork real life. In typical Japanese comic fashion, he uses large panels that are very dynamic. The action sequences have a powerful movement to them, with interesting "camera" angles and sweep. The work is cinematic in aspect, and this helps to push along a basically simple yet emotionally raw story without a lot of dialgoue, but rather with thoughtful and emotionally loaded pauses.

Note: there is also a Venus Wars 2, which is not as well done and only tangentially related to this plot line. This graphic novel however, covers the plot line I am reviewing.

Rating:
Summary: Great Comic Art of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Review: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko is a well known illustrator from Japan. He is one of the japanese comic artist I like most, the other one is Ryoichi Ikegami. This is a story happened in 2003 at Venus. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko use his skillful shadow technique to make things realistic, similar to the famous american comic artist Alex Ross. Also, the machine design of this comic story is also excellent. Moreover, there exist anime for this story, not the same story but with the same background and characters. This book and the anime DVD are must have items of your collection, if you are a Yoshikazu Yasuhiko fans, or a comic or anime lover.