2 out of 5

Tsutomu Nihei’s works are inherently visual. Coming from an architectural background, he set his own template with his breakout work Blame! of dense, deep worlds whose stories are firstly told through atmosphere, then bit-by-bit through secondary dialogue, as though the characters do not care if we understand their story.

Over the years, he became a better storyteller both visually and in text, though Knights of Sidonia started to flirt with more standard YA tropes, creating a back-and-forth for the creator. Ultimately, though, up through his artist / writer work prior to Kaina, Aposimz, it’s produced really compelling, identifiable material.

Kaina actually began as an anime created by Nihei, but that creation absolutely resulted in it bearing many of his identifiable story and character elements. This manga adaptation then followed, with, interestingly, Nihei only writing – something we had sort of seen previously with the Blame! anime adaptation, but this is much more clearly a unique script versus the screen – and Itoe Takemoto on art. And, unfortunately, if Tsutomu’s previous mangas have been an ongoing learning process, remixing that to be scripting for another has somewhat reset things.

Takemoto’s take on Nihei’s design and pacing – pacing which is still indebted to the visuals-first of Blame! – simply isn’t a good match. The models are very anime, with big and bulbous expressions, stuffed into Nihei world / costume designs. The models also look very digital, which, although perhaps fitting for something based on a Polygon anime, makes the choreography on page illegible – clunky, stiff characters cut-and-pasted around a frame, without clear spatial relation to one another. Without the show as reference, I’m not positive I would know what’s going on in some scenes.

The dialogue gets to be a little more compelling by comparison, but then there’s the disconnect between Itoe’s style and Nihei’s more contemplative tone. Not that this is heavy or deep material, but characters take silent beats in Tsutomu’s writing, and that quiet doesn’t have weight here.

But I don’t mean for that to be blame all on the artist, as part of the writer’s job is to script for their artist, and I’d guess that relationship just isn’t established here; Tsutomu is writing for himself. Furthermore, the pacing of this thing is quite off, hemmed in by being an adaptation to following certain beats and perhaps doubly foiling Nihei’s tendencies – chapters really don’t have much in the way of cliffhangers, not to mention the complete non-starter of the tankobon’s ending (though I don’t know if manga is written “for the trade” in the same way as other comics).

At the core of this is the interesting world of the book – a sea of snow below supporting some small, struggling cities; and high above, a dwindling population amongst the treetops; each civilization unaware of the other until Ririha escapes to the tops to meet Kaina – and surely curiosity as to where the story might go, with the duo surely needing to travel back down to the sea to somehow combat the conquering Vargha nation – and that world holds things together, despite a clunky meeting of writer and artist.

…Who have some further chapters to arrive at a more successful relationship!