'Volume 1 of the Aoashi Omnibus from Titan Manga collects and translates Volumes 1-3 of the original award-winning Japanese manga series.
'To the world stage! Glory and ambition lie ahead of young Ashito Aoi as he takes the first steps to becoming a pro soccer player. But after being catapulted into a new harsh environment, can he hold onto his spider’s thread and climb his way to the top? A fateful encounter on Futami Beach in Ehime, Japan leads to the meeting between Fukuda Tatsuya; once a rising star and a player on the cusp of greatness whose career ended all too soon, and Aoi Ashito; a brash and hot-headed striker who loves soccer despite his selfish tendencies.
'After being selected to try out for the Tokyo City Esperion Youth club, Ashito Aoi stakes his future on the chance to create a better life for his single mother and older brother, all while realizing his own shortcomings and dealing with the highly competitive world of J-Youth Soccer. With a mix of competitive high school soccer and a true-to-life representation of soccer and youth academies, Aoashi volume 1 starts the journey of the award-winning manga series.'
I'm not big into sports. Even before the option of being physically able to play sports was taken off the table for me it was never something that really interested me. I was drawn towards the world of fiction and art, preferring to lose myself to the unpredictability of a TV show or book over that of watching or playing a sports game that would give the same kind of thrill. As such, I've never really given much attention to stories about sports, other than the occasional film like Cool Runnings, or Blitzball segments in Final Fantasy X. When I was offered a copy of Aoshi's new 3-in-1 edition I felt like I was taking something of a gamble, having no real world interest in football; however, after spending some time reading through this hefty 600 page volume I'm happy that I took that chance and got to discover a really lovely new series.
Aoashi tells the story of Ashito Aoi, a teenager from the small prefecture of Ehime, where he's the star player on the local school soccer team. He's something of a hot-head, believing he's the best player the team has; a view that the other players tend to support as their main tactic tends to be 'get the ball to Ashito and let him score'. Despite his talent, he loses the opportunity to be picked by a high school scout watching from the stands thanks to his short temper. However, it does grab the attention of Fukuda Tatsuya, the manger of the Tokyo City Esperion youth team, who spends the night teaching Ashito a complex technique to gauge his abilities.
Fukuda invites Ashito to come to try outs in Tokyo to see if he has what it takes to join the best youth team in the country. This sets Ashito on a path that will test his abilities, his dedication, and his drive to achieve his dreams to the very limit.
One of the things that immediately struck me about Aoashi is that whilst the series is about sports, the focus on football felt somewhat secondary to that of the lead character. After looking into the series a little I learned that Yugo Kobayashi was approached to create the series, and originally didn't want to because he had no interest in making a sports manga. I think that this is perhaps one of the main reasons why Aoashi reads in such a way that someone like myself, who has no interest in sports manga, can come away really enjoying it.
In a lot of ways the sport feels like the element that was needed to justify the events of the book, whilst the main focus is Ashito. The early chapters where we're seeing this young hothead who thinks he's the best find out he's far from perfect give us a fantastic grounding for a character that has a ton of room to grow, and who desperately needs to. Despite this need, Ashito never feels like a jerk, and you can see the decent kid inside him shining through even then. However, as the story progresses and we see him travel to Tokyo and he realises there are people more skilled, and more dedicated than him, he's forced to grow-up somewhat, realising that if he doesn't change he's not going to make it as a football player.
Part of this journey heavily involves the people he meets along the way, whether that's the coaches at Tokyo City Esperion FC, the other kids on the tryout, or the players on the other teams already there, they all either push him to go further than he has before, or give him a valuable lesson such as the importance of making friends and trying to find new ways to express himself. Football might be the reason for all of this, but the story is about this young teen discovering the kind of person he wants to grow up to be, and the struggles he faces along the way; and because of that, I think that it's going to appeal to a much wider audience.
One of the things that I really appreciated about this first volume is that it's also incredibly grounded. This isn't a series where the characters unlock superhuman abilities, they don't kick the ball and send it flying at high speed wreathed in flames, and there's no ridiculous high stakes and drama such as players trying to kill each other mid-game. It's just teenagers playing football. Whilst I don't know a huge amount about football there's nothing I saw in the book that looked beyond the abilities of a real person, and nothing that happens on pitch that would end up with you getting arrested. This realism really helped to keep the focus on the characters and their very real experiences.
The art on the book is really impressive too, and the moments where we have action and drama on the pitch look fantastic. Kobayashi manages to convey movement and energy incredibly well, and some of the panels where characters pull off a particularly impressive or difficult move stand out as some of the best in the book. It also seems like a lot of care and attention are put into the times when a lot of characters are on the page together, whether running around the pitch or standing in a big group, and you can clearly see who everyone is and pick the important characters out from background characters without any issue. Considering how some big name manga series can sometimes cut corners in these moments, rushing the art and giving readers something of a disappointing experience, Aoashi never failed to impress in its visuals.
Character designs are pretty decent, and whilst none of the characters are too outlandish or unusual, each of them has something that sets them apart from others, whether than be hairstyles or facial structure, that you're never left wondering who's on the page, and can instantly recognise the important people. The only criticism I have with the art is on the pages between the chapters where Kobayashi will sometimes do pin-up style pieces with the books lead female character, Hana. There's one where she's posing in a small bikini with most of her body on display, and another where she's posing in nothing but a football shirt on top of the goal, and the picture is angles in a way to look up the shirt. She's never exploited or treated weirdly in the main book itself, but these pages come away as somewhat creepy and exploitative; especially as she's supposed to be around the same age as Ashito, making her about 15.
With this edition being a 3-in-1 the book is quite big, and covers a really decent amount of set-up for the series that I think makes it a lot easier to get into. The book does show you where each of the three individual three volumes would have ended, and whilst I would have enjoyed reading the smaller editions I don't think that I would have enjoyed it as much because I needed a bit longer to get into the story than other manga I've read. This is likely down to not being a sports fan, but I also think that readers wouldn't get enough insight into the characters in the smaller volumes to really become invested in Ashito and his journey. As it is, by the time this volume came to a close I was wanting to read more, and would have happily jumped into the next book.
Despite not being a sports fan Yugo Kobayashi manages to get me into Aoashi in relatively short time, getting me invested in the central character, his family life, his dreams, and the journey that he was starting. With some great art and a ton of heart, Aoashi will appeal to a ton of readers, whether you're a football fan or not.
Aoashi 3-in-1 Edition Volume 1 is available now from Titan Manga.
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