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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

May 3, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Twin Spica, Vol. 1

twinspica1Asumi Kamogawa is a small girl with a big dream: to be an astronaut on Japan’s first manned space flight. Though she passes the entrance exam for Tokyo Space School, she faces several additional hurdles to realizing her goal, from her child-like stature — she’s thirteen going on eight — to her family’s precarious financial position. Then, too, Asumi is haunted by memories of a terrible fire that consumed her hometown and killed her mother, a fire caused by a failed rocket launch. Yet for all the pain in her young life, Asumi proves resilient, a gentle girl who perseveres in difficult situations, offers friendship in lieu of judgment, and demonstrates a preternatural awareness of life’s fragility.

If Asumi sounds like a stereotypically optimistic manga character, a can-do kid who maintains a positive attitude through every set-back, the first volume of Twin Spica reveals her to be more complex and damaged than her firm resolve might suggest. Mr. Lion, her imaginary friend, is proof of the wounds she carries: she “met” him when she was six, never quite outgrowing the need for his counsel or company. When Asumi suffers a traumatic flashback to the Yuigahama disaster, for example, she calls out Mr. Lion’s name; when her father responds angrily to the news that she passed the space academy’s placement test, she asks Mr. Lion if she should enroll or abandon her dream of becoming “a driver on a rocket.”

Though Asumi’s story ran in Comic Flapper, a seinen magazine, Twin Spica works surprisingly well for both adults and teens. The storytelling is direct and simple without being didactic, filled with the kind of characters that younger readers will recognize and embrace as true to their own experiences. At the same time, however, Twin Spica‘s subtexts are rich enough to sustain an adult’s interest, as the supplemental stories “2015: Fireworks” and “Asumi” attest. Both explore Asumi’s response to her mother’s death, acknowledging and validating Asumi’s curiosity about her mother’s appearance (Mom suffered disfiguring burns) and about dying itself. (Six-year-old Asumi scandalizes funeral-goers by leaning over her mother’s casket to see what death “smells like.”) Without a trace of mawkishness, Yaginuma shows us how Asumi makes sense of what happened to her mother, recognizing his young heroine’s keen emotional intelligence in the way she chooses to honor her mother’s memory. Tween and teen readers may well find these passages moving, as they touch on one of childhood’s most primal fears, but adult readers will find them more unsettling, as they remind us of our inability to protect children from painful experiences, and of the moment when we first grasped death’s finality.

The artwork, like the narrative, has a direct, expressive quality that keeps the focus on the characters’ interactions, rather than the gizmos and laboratories where their training takes place. Yaginuma draws his tyro astronauts in a simple, stylized fashion that treats them as collection of distinctive geometric shapes: Fuchuya, one of Asumi’s classmates, sports a ‘do evocative of Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA terminal, while Asumi resembles a kokeshi doll with her exaggerated round head and tiny body. The characters’ slightly awkward proportions register as a deliberate artistic choice — call it studied naivete or primitivism — though at times the art seems a little clumsy and flat; readers will be forgiven for thinking Yusinuma’s storytelling skills outstrip his draftsmanship.

Whatever conclusions the reader reaches about Yusinuma’s style, it’s impossible to deny the emotional power of Twin Spica as a coming-of-age story about one girl’s journey from childhood to adulthood, and one nation’s journey from terrestrial power to space race competitor. A beautiful, thought-provoking book for star gazers of all ages.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc. Volume one of Twin Spica will be released on May 4, 2010.

TWIN SPICA, VOL. 1 • BY KOU YAGINUMA • VERTICAL, INC. • 192 pp. • NO RATING

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Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: Seinen, vertical

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Tweets that mention New blog post: Twin Spica, Vol. 1 — Topsy.com says:
    May 3, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Manga Critic. The Manga Critic said: New blog post: Twin Spica, Vol. 1 http://mangacritic.com/?p=4439 […]

  2. TCAF, Mushishi, and manhwa « MangaBlog says:
    May 4, 2010 at 7:21 am

    […] Manga Curmudgeon) Diana Dang on vol. 1 of Stepping on Roses (Stop, Drop, and Read) Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Twin Spica (The Manga Critic) Kristin on vols. 1 and 2 of Vampire Hunter D (Comic […]

  3. Upcoming 5/5/2010 « The Manga Curmudgeon says:
    May 4, 2010 at 8:22 am

    […] I can’t say enough good things about the first volume of Kou Yaginuma’s Twin Spica (Vertical), so I’ll point you to someone who says them better. That would be Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey, who offers a lovely assessment of the volume here. […]

  4. Japanese Science Fiction Con’s Seiun Nominees Posted says:
    May 8, 2010 at 8:49 am

    […] Twin Spica, Vol. 1 […]

  5. Twin Spica 1 by Kou Yaginuma: A- | Soliloquy in Blue says:
    May 9, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    […] think my review really does it justice, so if you’re still on the fence, check out what some others have had to […]

  6. The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » The Shipping News, 5/19/10 says:
    May 17, 2010 at 11:24 am

    […] other noteworthy arrival this week is Twin Spica (Vertical, Inc.), a lovely coming-of-age story about a teenage astronaut-in-training. To date, […]

  7. The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » The Shipping News, 5/26/10 says:
    June 10, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    […] this week is Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments (VIZ). Like Planetes and, more recently, Twin Spica, Saturn Apartments is less a ripping space yarn than a quiet drama about how people go about their […]

  8. The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » Short Takes: Children of the Sea, Raiders, and Twin Spica says:
    July 17, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    […] I said about volume one: “Twin Spica works surprisingly well for both adults and teens. The storytelling is direct […]

  9. The Shipping News, 9/9/10 « The Manga Critic says:
    September 8, 2010 at 7:48 am

    […] a young ninja who puts his martial arts skills to good use on the diamond; and the third volume of Twin Spica (Vertical, Inc.), a coming-of-age story about a teenager who attends astronaut school. Though I […]

  10. Keeping your manga collection current « Good Comics for Kids says:
    June 21, 2011 at 9:29 am

    […] Chi’s Sweet Home, an all-ages manga about a kitten and the family that rescues her, and Twin Spica, a tween- and teen-friendly series about a young girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut. UDON […]

  11. Short Takes: Children of the Sea, Raiders, and Twin Spica says:
    December 27, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    […] I said about volume one: “Twin Spica works surprisingly well for both adults and teens. The storytelling is direct […]



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