Holiday Review #23: CAPTAIN MOMO'S SECRET BASE

Another year, another opportunity for Dark Horse to release a new Kenji Tsurita manga.  What can this one offer that Emanon and Wandering Island could not?

CAPTAIN MOMO'S SECRET BASE (Momo Kancho no Himitsu Kicho), by Kenji Tsurita.  First published in 2017 and first published in North America in 2024.

PLOT:

In the far future, interstellar cargo deliveries are an everyday thing.  The companies that run them operate on tight margins, employing only a single pilot, basic amenities, and just enough battery power to get to the delivery site.  Moshi-Moshi Momo is one of these pilots, but she's not one to follow the rules.  She sneaks on her cat Grandpa John, hangs around stark naked, fills every space possible with physical books, and is always scheming new ways to tweak the ship's systems so she can get a little extra power to replicate better food, even if every instance means she is that much closer to running out of power before she gets to her destination.

STORY:

You know how Wandering Island and Emanon were wistful tales of young women seeking out something meaningful in their lives?  Yeah, throw those expectations right out the window for Captain Momo's Secret Base.  Tsurita himself describes this manga as one of his "hitahita" works, something dashed off quickly as a way to blow off steam and he infused that devil-may-care attitude into the work itself.

There's no real plot to speak of in this manga.  Mostly it's just about Momo whiling away her days while stuck in her den of a spaceship, happily turning off sensors, tweaking her life support systems and hacking her replicator so she can keep popping out new books to read.  She harbors no illusions about her lifestyle or her job.  She knows she's ultimately disposable to her company, that they will only ever provide the bare minimum for her literal survival, and that she must endure it all for three years at a time.  So why not bend the rules?  Why not just walk around naked and read what you want?  It's not like her supervisor can object.  She's back on earth, and on the rare occasion when she does check in with Momo there's at least a half-hour lag between comments due to the relativity of time and space.

What I don't get is what Tsurita wants the audience to take away from this.  Are we meant to relate to Momo's boredom in the face of a mundane job?  Are we supposed to find her craftiness and love of books endearing?  Or did Tsurita just want an excuse to make a comic about a naked woman rambling around a messy room?

ART:

At this point it's undeniable: Kenji Tsurita has a type.  She has long brown hair, a slender, willowy build with long arms and legs, a modest bosom, a slightly more pronounced butt, and a great deal of comfort with casual nudity.  This was true of Mikura, of Emanon, and it's absolutely true of Momo.  That being said, he gets especially egregious about it here because there's barely a single panel in this entire book where Momo is fully dressed.  She spends the vast majority of this manga butt-ass naked and the only thing protecting her modesty are the occasional pile of books or papers and the fact that she keeps her pubes au natural.  It's not like she's sticking her tits and ass out in the unnatural ways you see in ecchi titles, but he definitely finds excuses to twist and turn so he can look at her body as much as possible.  

The frustrating thing is that this books is as well-drawn as anything else Tsurita has produced.  He uses negative space well.  He's clearly put a lot of thought into the chaos of Momo's living quarters, where seemingly any free space not necessary for moment has been packed with books.  He draws Grandpa John well, which is no small feat considering that realistic looking cats are almost as hard to draw as realistic horses.  There's a roughness to the linework that's a testament to him still working with paper and pen.  All of that gets overshadowed by the constant nudity, though, to the point where it becomes kind of repellant.

RATING:

Captain Momo's Secret Base has to be the weakest of Kenji Tsurita's work in English.  It doesn't have anything meaningful to offer beyond a whole lot of fanservice.  Who knows if he'll ever get around to making this series more substantial, considering how infrequently he worked on it in the first place and how slowly he tends to work in general.  Unless your type of woman is the same type as his, I can't recommend this one.

This manga is published by Dark Horse.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 1 volume available.  1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

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