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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Donald Duck This Isn't, May 24, 2007
This review is from: Q-Ko-Chan 1: The Earth Invader Girl (Paperback)
"Q-ko-chan" is another example of how different manga is from American cartooning. It's about a girl robot, who - for reasons unknown - comes to Earth, together with an astonishingly vivid, if oddball, collection of other aliens. If you try to read it for the plot - like reading a Donald Duck comic - you'll be horribly disappointed and annoyed. "Q-ko-chan" does have a narrative structure, but it comes and goes and is not at the forefront of the story.
Instead, the characters are at the center - Q-ko-chan herself, minus memories, and feeling lost; Kirio, a boy who lets her live in his closet and with whom Q-ko-chan falls in love; Kirio's sister Furiko - they quite heartily dislike each other; a crew of space octopi who are a cross between truant officers and flying tanks, but who look like neither; the military, hell-bent on whatever the military does (which is mostly destroy things); and assorted friends, rivals, enemies, and others. The story is told primarily from Kirio's point of view, and the distinctly non-linear plotline, plus the drawings - sometimes incomplete, sometimes confusing, sometimes surreal - are the disconnected images of a child who cannot yet make sense of what he sees, hears, or feels. The setting - war and destruction - further complicates the narrative: if war barely makes sense to grown-ups, it certainly makes no sense to Kirio.
An example: in one episode in Volume 2, homes have been bombed. It doesn't matter how or by whom -- it's all wreckage. Kirio sees a little girl sitting in the debris and asks her what she's doing. She says "This... is my home" and then asks if her mother is there. Kirio pulls some wreckage out of the way; maybe we see a body, maybe not. "Naw," he says, "Nobody's here. Let's get out of here." "I'll stay," she says. There's no more to the scene.
For an adult, poignant; for Kirio, it's comprehensible only at the same level as the little girl: this happened. Nothing more than that.
The result is that Q-ko-chan is *evocative* rather than narrative: it stirs up memories, disjointed and incomplete; it shifts focus from one partial understanding to another; resolution eludes us. If you want the certainty of a Donald Duck cartoon, then by all means read Donald Duck. If you want academic analyses of children's thought processes under stress, try a textbook on child psychology. But if you want a sometimes quite uncanny visceral revisioning of childhood amidst chaos and war, read "Q-ko-chan." Highly recommended.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Love the art, a little manic, August 10, 2006
This review is from: Q-Ko-Chan 1: The Earth Invader Girl (Paperback)
Ueda Hajime was the artist behind the FLCL manga. That alone is enough to make me forgive many faults. Q-ko-chan is similar in a lot of ways to FLCL: mysterious girl from space, anti-social girl with glasses. But Kirio is no Naota, and Q-ko is definitely not another Haruko. Kiro's mom seems intriguing, and I'm looking forward to finding out more about her, the situation in general, and what Q-ko-cahn really came to Earth for...
The art is an acquired taste, but it really suits the fast pace of the story. When the author did the FLCL manga, there were a number of added moments that didn't show up in the anime--little character moments that showed extra backstory. For example, Naota's grandfather's backstory was really fleshed out, and the relationship between Haruko and Mamimi got extra attention. The author continues this in Q-ko-chan with little moments that show another side to the characters, bite sized glimpses that leave you ready for more explanation in the following volumes. If you like the FLCL manga, check out this one.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Decent start with art expected of Ueda Hajime, June 19, 2011
This review is from: Q-Ko-Chan 1: The Earth Invader Girl (Paperback)
Ueda Hajime's Q.ko Chan is an odd science fiction story set in an apparently not too distant earth future. While the details are never fully spelled out, the setting is post-apocalyptic, somehow both post and pre global war, and filled with alien interventions of peculiar kinds (teen-ish girl mechs on the one hand and squidlike alien vessels on the other).
Ueda Hajime's work is always an artistic treat. He is known for works such as the manga version of Fooly Cooly (FLCL), whose world bears a striking resemblance to Q.ko Chan's chaotic setting, and a number of anime OPs and EDs (including, of note, the ending for a few Bakemonogatari episodes). His style is rather unique and somehow couples a sharp exactness with a loose, carefree feel that almost seems childish (until you look close and see how perfect the lines and shading actually are).
As for story and plot, it is really hard to figure out what the heck is going on. The story comes across as a teen angst scifi romp, but folds in plenty of moe (the girls, when not in mech mode, are cute as can be), a bit of school life, sibling rivalry, family quarrels, plenty of mech battles, and even more plot confusion. This first volume mainly introduces the mech girls (Q.ko being the main) and the students who pilot them (with Kirio being the primary male lead). And with a main male student piloting a female mech, from Q.ko's early, desperate plea that Kirio "board her now!", the sexual innuendo is also rife. However, it seems that the major plot movements (if they are to come) are left for the second volume.
So far, it feels like a lesser version of FLCL.
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