Manga Review: World War Blue 1 Story by Anastasia Shestakova, art by Crimson
Many years ago, the Atarika Empire ruled over most of the continent Consume, but fell because it valued quantity over quality in its warriors. The empire fell apart into squabbling lesser states. In recent years, the Ninteldo Empire has arisen. It has turned most of Consume into vassal states, with a few offshore kingdoms remaining neutral. The only mainland kingdom to hold out against the Empire is the Segua Kingdom. Things are looking bleak. But in a remote village, a new warrior is about to make his debut.
In Marcthree Village, well behind the front lines, three orphans live. Gear, a boy whose speed is blinding, his best friend Tial, and a girl named Nel. Gear has been training for years to be ready to join Segua’s army and fight the Ninteldo Empire, but when Imperial soldiers suddenly pop up in the village, Gear hesitates. Tial goes to battle the invaders instead and is slaughtered. Gear finally finds his courage and wipes out the soldiers. Spurred by this incident, Gear heads off to join the Segua army with Nel in tow.
This fantasy manga is self-admittedly a fictionalization of the “Console Wars” between Sega and Nintendo back in the days, when they strove to dominate the home video game market. Gear is Sonic the Hedgehog (blue spiky hair, great speed, attitude problems), Fire Emperor Marcus of Ninteldo is transparently Mario, a mage with a Russian name is Tetris, and so forth.
Gear turns out to be a “Killer”, a warrior with powers far beyond those of ordinary people. This allows him to be inducted into the special forces unit immediately rather than have to spend months in boot camp. He’s soon teamed up with Opal, a young woman who specializes in ranged weapons, and the perverted puzzle wizard Tejirov. Tejirov helps in his own annoying way to bring out more potential in Gear and Opal, then realizes that Nel also has “Killer” powers she’s never realized and gets her added to the unit as well.
Now that the squad has been created, its first mission is to rescue the captured General Alex. Unknown to Gear, Alex is his long-lost father–will the mission succeed?
Unsurprisingly, this manga is heavy on the J-RPG cliches, but the meta-setting of the story somewhat justifies this. Video game fans will have a ball spotting all the references. There’s also “history of the Console Wars” text pieces between chapters to get younger readers caught up.
Impractically skimpy outfits for both male and female main characters are the rule; Gear doesn’t suddenly put on protective armor just because he’s in actual combat now. Lt. General Ramses does have a more practical outfit, but also has the only (doll-type) nudity in this volume to represent how excited she is by Gear’s combat prowess.
The characters are “types”, with Tejirov unfortunately being “the perv”. He mostly sticks to leering and making single entendre jokes about sticking his rod in things, but it’s annoying. (And it quickly proves that it’s deliberately so, as he enjoys making people uncomfortable.)
The writing and art are both so-so; this one’s all about the video game references.
Recommended primarily to video game enthusiasts, especially ones who preferred Sega’s output back in the day.
There was an anime adaptation, and here’s the opening!
