Paperback, 440 pages
English language
Published March 15, 2002 by Dark Horse.
I cannot, in all honesty, say this is a very heady reading. It's quite shallow, the manga equivalate of an action movie. It's really sexist, sometimes quite misogynistic, and always it's very consistently violent. Things progress very rapidly. In comparison to other classics of the genre (like Berserk) I found it equally exciting but depressingly hollow.
I'm not a big manga reader, but even then it's not hard to realize why this is as renowned as it is with its pages chock-ful of incredible illustrations, dynamic sequences, and just an incredible overall mastery over the medium. This is only volume 1 out of 6, so the story hasn't really started to reveal its twists and turns, but both the sci-fi setting and the premise are appealing, its characters varied and (very) flawed, and it's impossible not to fall for the masterfully depicted Neo-Tokyo. I haven't watched the movie in a long time, but it's already evident how much more filled with details the source material is and how much more concerned it is about life in Neo-Tokyo than the condensed film version.
28 years after reading the first volume, I’m finally finished the series. That’s a personal record. M
