Star Trek- The Manga Kakan Ni Shinkou review

Well, I’m still borrowing as many comics from the library as they have. Leading me to Star Trek the manga….

Wow, this must be the dorkiest thing I’ve ever laid hands on. C’mon, both Star Trek and Manga? Honestly though, when I think about it, it appears to be a GREAT idea, hypothetically. Manga is a medium known for high fantasy, Trek is high fantasy (IN SPACE) Both have fantastic creatures, characters, locations, really they should get together much better than they did…

Anyway, I accidentally started with the second volume, which didn’t make a difference, as this manga is every bit as episodic as the original series of Star Trek (which usually didn’t require that you watch any previous episodes) I actually didn’t like that aspect of Star Trek, as I thought it would do great as a serial….

…. And that problem is inflated here. I was hoping for a serial, and instead I see a bunch of disconnected chapters that have nothing to do with each other. Yep, this feels just like watching an episode of the original series. Everybody manages to stay in character, and I could picture most of them saying this stuff. The plots… I could totally see them happen in the original series. Which means they range in quality, have tons of cheese, and have all kinds of crazy instances. This is both good and bad, as it doesn’t get better than the original, and it doesn’t alienate the fans of the original. However, I would have preferred for a plot that was much more connected.

Art Style varied between chapters, as this was a collaborative project. I liked some of it but other parts were a little…. eh. I noticed the tradition of having tons of one-shot characters dieing continues. I wonder where the federation gets people for these missions, seeing as they die so often. Another gripe is that the individual stories seem far too short, and could have used a little more development. Although flawed, this manga is still readable, but comes off as a lighter version of the Trek universe.

Overview: Get it if you want a quick introduction to Trek, or need a quick Trek fix, but if you aren’t into Trek, you should probably pass.

5/10