Review by Frank Plowright

It may be called Comet Club, but that’s just the cloak, and the real purpose of after school activities it generates is the sighting of UFOs. In a remote Chinese town it provides a distraction for best mates Yang Kuaikuai and Li Yu, at fourteen bored with their lonely surroundings. Yet even Comet Club is distraction for creator Yi Yang, who uses it as both the dangling metaphor of something unknown and better, and to spark a plot that’s eventually more of a reality-based mystery.

Yang takes time to establish both leading characters. Kuaikuai is a maths prodigy, but not quite advanced enough to best Comet Club founder Qi Ming in a regional competition. His mother left when he was an infant, but has latterly returned and wants her son to accompany her back to a bigger city. Yu is initially more obvious, wild and impetuous, but also observant and street smart, all characteristics consistent with the upbringing we eventually see. A supporting cast is more one-dimensional.

There’s naked talent to the art, but not the greatest direction. Yang’s stylised manner of drawing the cast appeals, but they’re embedded in such chaotic surroundings that it’s not always clear where the focus ought to be. The same applies to the storytelling, which is adventurous, but doesn’t always work, an example being a scene presented as video footage embodying a headlong rush, but without a greater purpose.

It’s gradually disclosed that no member of the Comet Club has an entirely happy home life and one member is destined to have a brutal awakening as to the realities of their life in what’s an imaginative coming of age story, but one that could have been told better.