It's so rare to find a mecha manga with a female protagonist and mostly female cast that isn't made for the sake of fanservice, which makes it all the more disappointing that this one turned out so poorly.
STELLVIA (Uchu no Suturuvia), based on the anime series by Xebec with art by Ryo Akitsuki. First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2005.
PLOT:
Nearly 200 years ago, Earth was ravaged by a massive electromagnetic wave from a supernova. Even decades later, the night skies are still tinged with green. That's the reason that Shima Katose wants to become a space pilot: to see what the stars truly look like. She manages to get into the illustrious space academy Stellvia and makes some friends, but she struggles with her piloting courses. What she and her friends don't know is that the second wave of radiation is only a few months away...
STORY:
I really wanted to like Stellvia. I've got at least one friend who adores the anime, and having a largely female cast in a story like this isn't common without it turning into a harem. Yet I can tell that this is a deeply, deeply flawed adaptation.
The biggest problem is that this book is trying to condense half of a 26 episode anime series into a single 200-ish page book, and condensing things that heavily takes a toll on everything, including the characters. We do get a decent grasp on who Shima is as a character: energetic, naive, good with tech, easily overwhelmed. The same cannot be said for her castmates. Shima makes a bunch of friends at the school, but I'd be hard-pressed to remember their names, much less any personality points. That goes double for their teachers, who have their own relationships and dramas to navigate. A two-cour show has room for a cast that big, but in an adaptation like this sacrifices must (and should) have been made to keep the focus on Shima and her immediate friend group.
The other major problem is where this manga was published: Dengeki Daioh. At the time Stellvia was released it was a magazine that was home to a lot of goofy moe nonsense and lackluster anime-to-manga, and Stellvia represents the worst of both of those worlds. There's a lot of gags in this book, and none of them are funny. Worse, they are an active distraction from the plot, particularly at the times when it has to get serious. At one point the teaching staff might be discussing their plans to train up new pilots ASAP so they can protect the planet (and the school) from the second wave of cosmic radiation, only for it to be interrupted mid-info drop by someone making a silly aside and another person yelling at them while making a big silly face.
I don't know how much of this can be blamed on the mangaka and how much of it can be blamed on the anime writers, but it makes this book a bit of a trial to read. You'll note that I haven't even brought up any of the mecha elements, but that's mostly because it's an afterthought to all the silly school antics. I can't imagine this series satisfying anyone familiar with the series, and it's unlikely to convince manga readers to seek it out.
ART:
The emphasis on comedy also affects how this manga looks. Makoto Uno's original characters design are cute and gangly in a way that not only emphasizes the youthfulness of the cast but was in line with a lot of shojo character designs of the era. Ryo Akitsuki took those and gave them a major moe makeover. Their eyes were widened, their noses all but disappeared, their mouths shrank, and everything got simplified. If anything, their manga designs remind me of Mine Yoshizake (of Sgt. Frog fame). It's a look that's easy to squash and stretch for big goony overreactions, but it falls flat in quieter, more serious moments.
Because so much emphasis is on the comedy, we don't see a lot of the surroundings at Stellvia. There's a lot of talking heads in these panels and glamor shots of the girls and ladies and that doesn't leave a lot of room for space-age schools and spaceships. The whole book looks and feels cramped.
PRESENTATION:
Perhaps the worst visual element is what DrMaster did to the manga as a whole. The scans here are so grainy and gray that if you told me they were literally Xeroxed and blown up for printing I might believe you. It also has an overly stiff spine, similar to what I've seen with contemporary releases from CMX. I suspect they heard about Tokypop's notoriously underglued books and overcompensated.
RATING:
This manga was published by DrMaster. This series is complete in Japan with 2 volumes. Both volumes were published and are currently out of print.
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