Written & Illustrated by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Published in the west by Viz Comics (right to left), $7.95 (US) max, available from www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk and any other suppliers of Gundam books.

Overview

This ongoing manga series is from the character designer & animation director on the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (Yas). It retells the events of the original series Mobile Suit Gundam in a different and perhaps more in-depth manner. Volume one begins with the Zaku incursion into Size 7 and finishes with Amuro staring meaningfully towards the inactive Gundam and Zaku attackers after Fraw's relatives have died. If you've seen the movies or TV series of MSG then that's going to sound like a dreadfully dull book. In fact it's not as Yas makes two important additions that result in more going on in that period of time. The three Zakus have multiplied into six and there is now an active prototype Gundam. This results in a battle between the Zakus & the Gundam to contend with amongst the more familiar pattern of events. There are other more minor changes such as Amuro now hacking into his dad's files and coming across RX-78 & Zaku plans.

Opinion

The art in Gundam: The Origin is all in Yas' lively style. His people have a very expressive quality to them which is preferable to the more simplistic conventions for displaying emotion you often find in manga/anime. The same style applied to the mobile suits (and battleships etc) results in a rather organic edge to their mechanical forms. Consequently the action scenes are very vibrant & alive which is what you want - there's a danger with transferring mecha combat to paper that you could lose the dynamic nature of it on-screen Most of the manga is in black and white which can occasionally look a little flat but most of the time is very well done. The first eleven pages, however, are done in a gloriously vibrant and natural colouring. Whilst it may be computer coloured it certainly doesn't look like it, retaining more of a water-colours quality to it.

The spacing of the dialogue over speech bubbles can be a little overly disjointed at times. I don't know if it works better in the original Japanese but certainly in English the splitting of one sentence across three bubbles does lessen the enjoyment of reading. The script is so far what you'd expect from the relatively light-in-dialogue beginning to MSG. However I'm not expecting too much from the text as in the manga I've read I notice that they tend to rely less on words and more on pictures to tell the story.

The story itself bounces along nicely with a feeling of anticipation for the events you know are coming. The additions, which I mentioned earlier, I thoroughly enjoyed. The Prototype Gundam fight was nicely played out and set the remaining Zakus up for their rampant destruction better than the TV show/Movies did. The increased number of Zakus also added to the air of menace around the Zeon incursion. Volume 1, then, is great way to begin the tale. Despite the short period of events in regards to the original it still feels full. At its cheap cheap price (a lot of Americans seem to moan about the price but the equivalent pages in a US comic cost nearly two and a half times as much) it's well worth the money for any Gundam fan. It's especially worth it for anyone who either hasn't seen any of the original series or (like me) has only seen the movie versions.

Written to Barber's Adagio For Strings