Review: SILENT MOBIUS

 Well, considering that Kia Asamiya was a guest at this year's Otakon, maybe it's time for me to cover his most famous manga work.

SILENT MOBIUS (Sairento Mebiusu), by Kia Asamiya.  First published in 1989 and first published in North America in 1999.

PLOT:

In the year of 2026, Tokyo is a pollution-soaked metroplis plagued by bizarre interdimensional creatures known as Lucifer Hawks.  The city's only defense is AMP: the Attacked Mystification Police.  They are an all-female squad of officers who use a combination of magic and tech to destroy the Lucifer Hawks.  They not only have to deal with the resentment of their more ordinary male colleagues but also their own personal struggles and dramas.

 STORY:

Silent Mobius is basically "what if Bubblegum Crisis, but with magic instead of robots?"  That's a concept that made it an easy sell once it made the leap to cinemas in the early 1990s, but I feel like Asamiya missed some steps in translating that concept to manga.

This series basically starts in media res, as the AMP are called upon to fight what can only be described as an interdimensional bug demon, only to find themselves fighting one of their own colleagues when she is possessed.  It serves as a decent introduction to what the AMP team is capable of and it helps establish the rivalry between them and the regular police forces (who are all male), but it's hard to get too invested in it all when we barely have an idea who these women are beyond ridiculous names like Katsumi Liqueur, Kiddy Phenil, and Lebia Maverick.

In fairness, Asamiya must have recognized this as well, as the series shifts gears and the subsequent chapters focus on just one or two members of AMP.  Even then, it's clear that he hasn't put that much thought into them as individuals.  Most of them fall into familiar archetypes of the time: the soft-spoken childish one, the boorish rowdy one, the no-nonsense boss lady, etc.  It feels half-assed, like he was doing only just enough to move on to the next action set-piece.  The whole volume feels less like the beginning of a bigger story and more like a pitch for an animated project.  Considering that the movie adaptation of this series came along only a few years after the manga's debut, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was Kia Asamiya's intention for Silent Mobius the whole time.

ART:

If there's one thing that Asamiya nails from the first page, it's how he draws action.  His posing, his paneling, his page layouts, all of it is precise as a pin and works in perfect harmony to convey the flow and energy of the AMP's battles from the simplest footchase to the explosive magical climaxes.  He also puts a lot of detail into the backgrounds, selling the dank technological morass of a polluted, croweded, 2026-era Tokyo (even if half of the time it ends up getting blown up).  If there's a failing, it's with the character designs.  They're very much in the style of 1980s Kenichi Sonoda, a look that a lot of Japanese artists were riffing on at the time.  It's a fine look in general, but again it makes the girls of the AMP feel interchangeable save for hairstyles and maybe skin tone.  It's not helped by the fact that the AMP uniforms are often covered by large robes or capes while they're on the job, making them all the harder to distinguish visually.

PRESENTATION:

I'm reviewing the "Complete Edition" of Volume 1, which was released in 2009.  Alas, the name became a rather ironic one when Udon dropped this release after Volume 4.  Anyway, this was meant to be a deluxe release, with a slightly-larger-than-average page size to better show off the art and a lot of bonus color artwork.  The additional art looks nice...which is something that can't be said for the new cover art, which features the ugly, blank, boxy faces that became a visual signature of his from the 90s onward.  I couldn't even tell until I checked the interior notes that the person on the cover was supposed to be Katsumi!

In addition to that, there's the first half of an interview with Asamiya where he discusses the process behind the creation of this manga.

RATING:

There's a germ of a good idea in Silent Mobius, but it's not putting the effort where it needs it most: its cast.  "Bubblegum Crisis but with magic" might be a simple enough foundation to build an anime upon, but it's not quite enough to carry a full-length manga.

This series was published by Udon Entertainment, and previously by Viz.  It is complete in Japan with 12 volumes available.  All 12 volumes were released by Viz; 4 volumes were released by Udon.  All volumes are currently out of print.