Space . . . no longer the final frontier. Now high school kids take school trips to habitable planets. But what happens when everything goes terribly wrong 9 light years from the nearest help?
Creative Staff
Story & Art: Kenta Shinohara
Translation: Adrienne Beck
What They Say
What starts as a pleasant class trip to a planet five light-years away becomes a nightmare survival trip to get back home.
In the year 2063, interstellar space travel has become the norm. What sort of adventure awaits on the new frontier?
It’s the first day of Planet Camp, and Aries Spring couldn’t be more excited! She, along with eight other strangers, leave for Planet McPa for a weeklong excursion. Soon after they arrive, however, a mysterious orb appears and transports them into the depths of space, where they find an empty floating spaceship…
The Review! (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Technical:
This book’s cover has attractive artwork and color choices. However, it’s the back cover that’s unique with its panel layout showing glimpses of the story instead of a single picture. I prefer large art that wraps around from front to back, but this is a cool back cover compared to many books. Kenta’s art style is typical for this genre; decent amount of detail on the characters with sparse backgrounds. To be fair, many of the scenes take place in space with nothing but stars in the background. The characters have good designs and I like his spacesuit designs. At first, the suits appear standard form-fitting outfits, but they have some branding to them that makes it seem more realistic. Not overboard Nascar branding, but just enough to make it interesting.
The book quality is standard Viz. Clean printing with no color pages or any extras. I do wish the first two-page art in this book retained its original color-printing as it was probably beautiful. The translation reads great and I didn’t notice any annoying grammar errors.
Content:
The year is 2063 and humans have advanced enough to explore deep space. The advance of faster-than-light travel has made it possible for humans to travel to planets 9 light years away in as little as 5 hours. Space travel is so common that it’s a tradition for teenagers of space school to camp on nearby planets with no adults to supervise. The whole premise seems ludicrous to me, but the kids are excited.
At least, they were excited about their adventure before a mysterious giant orb appeared and chased them down until they were all swallowed alive. Somehow, being taken into the orb teleported each of the kids in Kanata’s school to outer space above a planet. Luckily, they had their space helmets on before they were swallowed by the orb. Even luckier, there was a nearby spaceship for them to take refuge in. But from here, things get really weird. They somehow teleported 5,012 light years from where they had been!
Lost in space, in an abandoned spaceship with no adults to help and their ship is damaged enough that it can’t keep more than about three weeks of food and water in storage. Things could go bad real fast, but these kids are in school to become space explorers. That could help them get by, if they can figure out how to create a functioning crew and live by the hierarchy necessary for any ship to function and survive.
Enter the quirky group of characters. Normally a space crew would be chosen because everyone filled a role, but this was not planned and they will be forced to adapt. Can Kanata draw on his survival strengths and bravery to be their captain? Can Charce’s easy-going personality help everyone get along? Can Zack’s brilliant mind help him be the ship’s Spock? Even if those three can keep things working, can the other six misfits keep from killing each other?
In Summary:
To be completely honest, the first chapter of this book left me wondering if I had picked up some boring shonen garbage. However, through this first volume, many of the characters grew in depth and personality. Beyond a single protagonist with an accompanying cast of characters, I found myself wanting to learn more about many of the characters. The story itself is interesting given the setting is so far into the future that faster-than-light travel common and seemingly old hat to the characters. That proves to be a fun aspect to explore. I’m glad I decided to check out this series and look forward to the next volume. It will be interesting to see if they can keep things together or if this dissolves into a space lord of the flies.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Viz
Release Date: December 5, 2017
MSRP: $9.99
