365 Days of Manga, Day 78: Icaro

ICARO (Ikaru) （イカル) • Moebius (story), Jiro Taniguchi (art) • Ibooks (2003-2004) • Kodansha (Morning, 1997-2000) • 2 volumes • Psychic Science Fiction • 18+ (graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations)
The collaboration of famed French sci-fi artist Moebius and manga artist Jiro Taniguchi, Icaro is a beautiful but ultimately insubstantial work. Icaro, a boy born with the power of telekinetic flight (as a newborn infant, he hovers around the delivery room), is raised as an experimental test subject in a remote scientific facility. When he falls in love with a girl, he tries to escape, but a mad scientist wants to perform brain surgery on him to discover the origin of his powers. Moebius’ script is little more than a clothes horse for Taniguchi’s artwork, with splash pages of machinery and architecture more detailed than Katsuhiro Otomo’s, and memorable images of the human body, such as a poignant scene of Icaro trying to fly while being held down by armed stormtroopers. The manga’s best feature is its inventive expression of psychic powers, tapping into a Hayao Miyazaki-esque love of flight, rather than the usual giant explosions (although they’re here too). The plot works entirely on a visual level; most of the dialogue is redundant. The sudden ending and the presence of extraneous characters–a sexy Lieutenant Colonel, and Tanaka, a mind-blasting psychic government agent–suggest that the series was cancelled abruptly. The ikaru of the title is a Japanese transliteration of the mythological Icarus. The English edition splits the one-volume Japanese version into two smaller volumes.

Today’s winner is Nicholas Q. of Tennessee. Congrats, Nicholas! We also have a new photo from a winner, Ellen P.!

Thanks, Ellen! I’m glad you liked Tenshi Ja Nai and Peach Girl. Peach Girl is a great little shojo manga series of the “extreme melodrama over who is kissing who” sort. Jyu-Oh-Sei is good, too, if you can get into the retro science fiction shojo style. I’ll be sending you some more manga ASAP, I hope I can help you discover more stuff that you like!