Moon Rabbit

Tsuki Usagi is a 1-shot manga by Kuji Shinnosuke.  It follows up an earlier 1-shot, Astro and was published in Japan in 2013.

    A number of years after the events of Astro the colony on the Moon has developed as intended.  In order to fund the colony and increase public awareness of the mission space tourists are encouraged to take trips to the colony.  NAXA (the space agency in the story) captured a terrorist as he tried to board a ship to the moon.  Interrogating him they discover a plot to detonate suicide bombs in the colony.  They quickly contact the 3 astronauts from the original manga to try and stop the terrorist from succeeding.

    OK, while the characters still come with unnecessary facial flare, this 1-shot was quite a bit better than the original one.  It seems the manga-ka has gotten into a better grove with the writing and it was surprisingly good.   The character designs at times do suffer a bit from oddities, but the backgrounds and technical designs are highly detailed and well done.  The story also sets its self up for more.  So, with a bust on the original part, I am hoping to see more of this world in the future.

    As with Astro, don't expect to EVER see Moon Rabbit commercially in North America.