ISBN-13: 978-1613134191
Language: English
Direction: Right to Left
Pages: 133
By: Nao Yazawa
Publisher: Digital Manga Guild
Type: Series, Manga
Genre: Seinen, Action, Adventure,Synopsis:
A biological research station with a greedy, traitorous head researcher. A devastating earthquake. An unprepared government and an unsuspecting populace ring fenced and left to fend for themselves while facing an unknown epidemic. One young man leads a band of children and youths in a daily fight for survival against disease, starvation, and those who seek to prey on the weak. Welcome to the Isolated Zone.
Usually i wanted to keep my Series of the Month for completed series, yet this particular series is so good that it’s making me break that.
The story is amazing, Nao has created a great semi post apocalyptic story. The characters are what makes this series so interesting though. The personality of the characters is really well developed and distinct, more so than i was expecting.
Over the course of the volume we get to see the characters develop and subtly change as they start to deal with issues around them. The thing that really got to me though was the characters that died over the course of the volume. You just get to like a character and then BAM they’re dead.
The ending of this volume was just amazing, I’d started to think I’d made the connections and figured things out. Yet right at the end Nao pulls a blind side on us and changes things up on us. Frankly it left me gobsmacked at the way this volumes ends, and made me eager for the next volume.
Art wise this reminds me a lot of Osamu Tezuka’s art style, in fact if i hadn’t been aware of the fact that it was Nao’s art i would have sworn it was Tezuka’s. That in and of it self wouldn’t be anything special, since I’ve seen a lot of manga-ka mimic Tezuka’s art style. What made me take notice of this however, was the fact that Nao changes his art style depending on the manga she’s created. I’ve now read a few different titles from her and they all have a distinctly different art styles, which to me shows of just how skilled Nao is.
What’s more, one of my concerns was that this would be a short series, of three of four volumes. Nao however has said it runs for twelve volumes, which is just the right number of volumes for the series to be great, without it being over long and drawn out.
DMG did a pretty good job with this title, i read it on my kindle and there were no problems at all. It was easy to read with the text being neither to big or to small, with good choice of fonts and placements.
As with any new series it’s hard to judge on the first volume alone, but it’s fair to say i have very high expectations for this series. However, right now, i highly recommend this series
