'Manga virtuoso Ryuuichi Sadamatsu thrusts readers into a world engulfed by war, as we instantly witness Maki Makino’s life being turned upside down. The student was previously competing in track and field events, but after her life was saved by a mysterious man, everything changed. She must get to grips with the new powers that have been bestowed upon her before an ominous and formidable threat arrives.'
Cosmic Censorship thrusts readers into a bizarre world of alien invaders, time travel, mecha weapons, and super powers that all centre around a teenage schoolgirl named Maki Makino, who finds her entire existence upended when these various forces converge on her normal life.
Set in a world where huge debris falling from the sky is a normal, almost mundane occurrence, we meet Maki, a seventeen-year-old former track runner whose life was changed when she was caught up in a meteor hit three years before. Having been caught in a collapsing building with a wound in her leg, Maki thought that she might die, until a mysterious man treated her wound and showed her a way to get out; a man who told her that he was an alien. Now, years later, Maki has worked hard to rehabilitate her leg injury, and is pushing to keep running.
Whilst out running one day Maki encounters an older guy who she feels strangely drawn to, a man who saves her during another meteor fall. However, during the rescue Maki loses a precious talisman, having accidentally picked up another one in the confusion, one that contains a strange item. Heading back to the park where the event happened that night to try and find her own talisman, Maki is shocked to discover a dead body, and the man she met before lurking in the area with a sword and a gun. Fleeing for her life, Maki believes that the man might be trying to kill her, but little does she know that the man is not only there to protect her, but that much more twisted and strange forces have decided that they want her dead.
Science fiction manga can sometimes go a little bit too weird for me, perhaps it's a taste thing, or maybe its some kind of cultural difference where Japanese sci-fi writers have much more complex ideas than my mind can keep track of, but Cosmic Censorship definitely falls into this camp. There are a lot of moving parts in this first volume, and relatively few explanations to go along with them. Maki learns that the falling meteors are an alien invasion, and that people like the man who saved her, who uses the name Roger Penrose, have travelled back in time from a dark future to try and create a better one.
This alone isn't too complex, and it has some shades of The Terminator to it as Roger makes protecting Maki his mission, preventing her predestined death to try and nudge the timeline in a better direction. He does this by fighting giant monsters with weapons and enhanced abilities that make him kind of like a super-hero type character. When things get too much for him he's able to summon a huge mech to take down his enemies too. All of this happening without the public knowing about it too. Again, not too bad, not too complex. However, when other time travellers, called Cosmic Censors, start trying to kill Maki to create another different future, and Maki begins to develop super powers of her own things start getting a bit complex.
I think part of the problem is that this first volume is doing a lot of set-up, and it's laying the groundwork for stories and ideas that will be explored in future volumes. So if you were to read Cosmic Censors as a whole it probably wouldn't be too bad, but as a contained volume I did feel a little confused, and even unsure as to what was happening at times. It's not enough to make me not want to read the next volume in the series, as I'd love to see if that starts to give more answers, but it was enough of an issue to take away some of the enjoyment I had.
The book has some great art to accompany the interesting story, and Sadamatsu gives a lot of personality to the characters, giving each of them distinct looks that show off their personalities well. The action scenes are where the book really shines though, and it's a shame that this first volume doesn't give them a little more room as the artwork in these moments is superb. Again, I'm expecting the future volumes will likely get grander in scale and action, and that's when we'll see some of Sadamatsu's best work.
Cosmic Censorship is an interesting, if a little heavy, first volume that will absolutely appeal to people into big sci-fi concepts. The lack of breathing room at times and the multiple ideas thrown at the reader might put some folks off, but it feels like a series that if given more time will make a lot more sense and so I'm definitely going to try and check out the next volume.
Cosmic Censorship Volume One is out now from Titan Comics.
