4 out of 5

Surprisingly linear!  Surprisingly manga-y!  Aaand some incredibly unnecessary fan-service.  Sigh.

The linearity and manga-ness aren’t pluses or minuses, exactly, I just found those aspects especially interesting: that Aposimz’s plot, at this point, has boiled down into a fairly straight-forward bad guy hunt: Etherow and Keisha on the prowl for ‘Reincarnateds’ – versus the more open-ended fetch quests of Blame!, or the space opera scope of Sidonia; and that said Reincarnateds are proving to have electrical and metal and wind powers, just like any given magic-using anime character.

This is still wrapped in a Nihei shell of worlds within worlds; of trans-humanism; and of big shooty guns and Giger-esque armor, but I was enjoying the kick of reading something once and understanding it, without having to pore back and forth for one-panel references to a character or place.  So it’s a different Nihei, kind of mainstreamed, but absolutely enjoyable.

Straddling that vibe is the artwork, which gives us the cutesied Sidonia-type figures Nihei has been using, but the feathered, lithe, minimalist linework he’s been using on Aposimz sorta kinda blows my mind.  In a way, this takes over the obliqueness that’s no longer part of his narrative style; not in the sense that what’s shown is up for debate, rather that as Tsutomu has stripped away all of his sketchiness down to the bare minimum of lines, it sets Aposimz in this very ethereal, out-there version of the world.  Blame!, on the other hand, is surreal in its setting, but the excessive blacks and greys make it very concrete, and heavy, visually.  Aposimz floats.

Anyhow.  Stop the fan-service, but I’m very much enjoying barreling ahead toward the badguys with our hero Frames.