Review by Win Wiacek
Twin Spica 1 introduced Asumi Kamogawa who’s dreamed her entire life of visiting the stars, despite a personal connection with Japan’s worst space disaster. She’s joins a training programme for prospective astronauts, and here she’s adjusting to life in Tokyo, moving into women’s dorm ‘The Seagull’, making friends, starting classes and scraping by on her meagre funds. An assiduous student, she nevertheless incurs the hostility of the astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unknown to her Sano has bad history with her father and will seemingly do anything to thwart her dreams.
Asumi is far smaller than all other candidates and her determination to succeed in the arduous physical and mental training incurs real problems in the swimming classes due to her near-drowning as a child. Moreover her size means she will need a custom-made pressure suit – giving Sano an opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictions. When this doesn’t work he steps up his campaign and really turns the screw on the unsuspecting Asumi, revealing a shocking secret about her father.
Kou Yaginuma also includes prequel stories in every volume, dealing with episodes from Asumi’s life prior to the present day continuity. ‘Campanella’s Forest’ references Kenji Miyazawa’s novel Night on the Galactic Railroad and explores the past of the astronaut who piloted a doomed rocket and Asumi’s mother’s relationship with him.
Tomoro Kamogawa is the tragic star of ‘Our Stars, Leaf Stars’. In the wake of the Lion disaster Asumi’s father is assigned by the corporation who built the ship to head the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and himself bereaved, the devastated engineer must visit and apologise to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family. As always, the faithfully attendant Mr. Lion looks sadly on.
The volume concludes with a second episode of ‘Another Spica’ as the cartoonist relates the time he worked in a shopping mall and had to dress up in a monkey suit, as that girl and that lion-headed guy simply looked on and mocked.
This delightful epic has everything. There’s plenty of hard science to back up the savvy extrapolation, a believable, likeable cast, an enduring mystery, tender moments, isolation and teen angst, dawning true friendships, all wrapped up in a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and gobs of pure sentiment. Plenty more follows in Twin Spica 3.
