I had a good feeling about this one when it launched, but here we are I guess 😶

Aliens Area

(Fusai Naba)

June 2022 to October 2022

20 Chapters

What I Liked

• Artstyle – I like how ‘sketchy’ it looked
• Day in the life of a bureaucrat – I personally enjoyed the kinda ‘slice of life’ jobs like the traffic infringements etc. Not everything has to be shooty/slashy action when it comes to aliens/human interactions.
• Alien equipment – I thought the ‘system’ was interesting and had potential
• Akina – she was just cool, fullstop.

Where I Think Things Went Wrong

• Main character was too bland – especially design-wise in comparison to Sharaku. Tatsumi is a nice guy, and that’s about it. Maybe a bit too naive too. Not really characteristics that lead to a memorable MC.
• Day in the life of a bureaucrat – obviously is not exciting in the least, I’m just weird for enjoying it. All the red tape doesn’t make for very inspirational characters either. It’s a fantasy story! People probably *want* to see Tatsumi and co break the rules (and get away with it)! Or at least find a loop-hole so it felt like the work their were doing actually had a meaningful impact for human/alien co-existence.
• Alien equipment – probably wasn’t obvious enough what each item could do so the fights ended up being unsatisfying because you just got info-dumped rather than being able to see/assess what was happening. Failing the show, not tell rule
• Tatsumi’s special weapon – he had this cool alien implant but then they switched the focus to some special contact lenses instead? Not really very flashy 😅
• Irrelevant siblings – they just kind of existed to give Tatsumi a reason to need a job. It would have been nice if they were actually important in some other way
• A3 connection – should have been foreshadowed earlier that his parents were involved with A3 for a bit more intrigue.

Conclusion

While I thought this was a nice chill series, it really didn’t have anything stand-out about it in terms of characters, action or story. It seems like this one might also get an epilogue in the tankobon release, but I feel like it closed things out enough that I don’t need any further conclusion. Or rather, there wasn’t too much to close-out to anyway…

Categories: Simulpub Review

Tagged as: Aliens Area WSJ Graveyard

hikaru