Propeller Heaven

Hitoshi Tomizawa writes weird stuff, be warned! This is pure weirdness. But it isn't without plot or intelligence, it's calculated and makes sense by the end. No gore or nastiness, it still packs quite a visual and emotional wallop. His art is simple but the story is twisting and twisted at the same time. You'll have many "what the heck!" moments along the way, bear with it, there is an explanation by the end, it all makes sense. Well, as much sense as Tomizawa stories ever do! I liked it quite a bit. Far from perfect, it is... different! So if (like me) you complain that 'mangasare all alike these days' then here is the cure for you!

Most people will probably know Hitoshi Tomizawa from Alien 9, a bizarre little manga made into OVA. It was unfinished and a little convoluted but interested many with the very unusual premise and atmosphere. Propeller Heaven has both of those again but this time with the execution so horrid it made me regret what little time I spent on it. Propeller Heaven is about… something, I think? It’s hard to even summarize what the hell it was about cause you’re dropped in the middle of the story and try to figure out what’s going on along the way. There’s no clear setup and the plot structureis like a tangled slinky that was dropped under a car a few times on top of that. What I gathered is that this is a world with real people and synthetic people who are either entirely manmade or were previously human or maybe it’s both nobody actually knows cause it’s never quite clear. Synthetic humans seem to serve to protect real humans but some synthetic humans are not okay with it and seem to want to reprogram real humans to make a world that’s better for synthetics cause real humans treat them badly or they are forced to do something? It’s never clear cause the big bad just kinda appears and eventually they go on about how humans are terrible while brainwashing everybody. The ending implies that this sort of revolution of synthetics happens over and over so what you see is just a part of the loop or at least that’s what I got from this. Am I correct? Maybe, maybe not. This story is such convoluted and deliberately obtuse garbage that it’s hard to even properly grasp whether your assumptions are correct or you’re going off of wrong clues. Even assuming that I’m right and there is some sort of narrative about human nature in this, is there any value to this manga? Does it say anything? I don’t think so and it doesn’t compensate it with action or character moments or art or really anything. The action consists of a synthetics turning into giant propellers and cutting up other synthetics a few times. The characters are just drawing with little else to them and art while charming and unique is not good enough to warrant reading based on art alone. If you think I’m completely wrong about the story please tell me, if there’s something I missed and there’s actually more to this than I think (which I honestly doubt) I would like to hear it. As is this is not worth reading, even with how short it is.