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There are eight volumes in the series and so far Del Rey has released the first five. They run about $10.95 plus tax, which is a little over the average price for manga these days. Having seen the original Japanese books for this series, it would have been nice if the opening color pages had been reproduced in the English print, much like Tokyopop has done with its recent Saiyuki Reload books. The black and white reproduction doesn’t do them justice.

That said, the story and artwork more than make up for the extra cost. I was first attracted to Fuyumi Soryo’s artwork in MARS, a fifteen volume series published by Tokyopop from March 2002 to November 2003. She has a way of portraying the human figure in a few sparse lines that captures the posture, whether it’s a glance over the shoulder or a slouch.

In ES, she still has that same grace about her figures, but her style has matured. Lines are a little bolder, a little more controlled. Her characters, while still lean, are less willowy, and have smaller, more realistic eyes. It adds a level of intensity to her characters that suits the story much better than her previous style would have. She depicts the mindscape several times throughout this volumes and it is an intriguing and surreal look at the darker parts human thought and emotion. Akiba’s views of Takeshi’s mind are some of the more gruesomely beautiful pages I’ve seen from any of Soryo’s other works.

Readers of MARS may also recognize a few themes in ES. Fuyumi Soryo has a fondness for female leads that are blonde and strong, though socially awkward in some manner. As for her male leads, they tend to the knights in tarnished armor, and more than likely have an evil twin lurking in their past, ready to come forward and cause them all sorts of angst.

In this printing Del Rey has managed to balance the needs of translation with the integrity of the artwork with reasonable success. Many manga publishers often leave these sound effects untouched with an extensive glossary to explain them. Depending on how you like your Japanese manga reprinted, this could be good or bad. On the one hand, the less they alter the original page, the more intact the artwork and story telling will be. On the other, glossaries in the back are sometimes tedious to flip through. Del Rey chose to translate those sounds on the page but when the effects become an essential visual dynamic of the panels, they add the English discreetly, rather than deleting the Japanese. I found it more successful than the additional glossary, which I always ended up ignoring.

This series may not be for everyone, but I find it has a nice balance of elements. There’s enough psychic powers, violence and intrigue to keep some sci-fi thriller people happy, but there promises to be a fair amount of character exploration and development along the way. I’m certainly looking forward to reading the next volume.


For more information on ES, visit Del Rey Online.
For more information on MARS and Saiyuki Reload, visit Tokyopop.

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