Astro

Astro is a 1-shot space manga by Kuji Shinnosuke.  It was published in 2013 in Japan.

    Set a bit ahead in the future, a 3 man team of astronauts return to the Moon following a disaster 5 years earlier.  Their mission is to shut down the energy for a solar power plant that was set to fuel a forthcoming colony.  The plant was damaged and is preventing further development due to its uncontrolled electrical output.  The team has two goals; the first being to cut the power to the station allowing it to be repaired and restored, the other is to reinstate the drive for space exploration.  After the accident 5 years earlier, in which a small meteor shower caused an explosion, killing that team of astronauts, public opinion against the dangers of space exploration has been mounting.  One of the members of the new team is the daughter of an astronaut who was killed in the accident.  She is driven to continue the work of everyone before her, restore faith in that work and to say farewell to her father.

    This came as a random online recommendation and I don't see why it was recommended.  It wasn't that good.  In fact, it was bad.  The technical designs were well done but the character flair was annoying and unneeded.  What is with this current trend of having characters with shit on their faces?  Like random pieces of tape and other things?  The characters were a bit played out too when it came to their personality.  I understand you only have so much time to build the story and the characters with 40 or so odd pages.  But 2 out of the 3 members of the main team of astronauts were incredibly 1-dimensional and seemed to be more suited for Naruto or some other shonen action series than anything else.  The 3rd member of the team and their commanding officer were, on the other hand, believable and decently handled as was the background story and everything besides the actual part dealing with the two shitty characters accomplishing the mission.  But, it wasn't as bad as a I make it out to be.  The art was good and part of the story was good.  I just wish it would have been better, it could have been better.  There was a follow-up 1-shot called Moon Rabbit that has the main characters fighting against terrorists trying to stop Lunar colonization.  I'm not expecting much out of it but will read that one too...stay tuned for the review of that one.

    This will never see the light of day commercially in North America, or possibly anywhere else.  So if you want to read it you will have to do it in Japanese or scanlation.