Publisher Summary
After firearms become legal in Japan, gun-toting mercenaries prowl the streets, looking to exterminate any criminals who would dare show their faces. Explore the early days of the Burst Angels — Jo, Meg, Amy, and Sei in this prequel that explores how they met and became the elite squad of mercenaries they are today!
Author: GONZO & Minoru Murao
Translator: Motoko Tamamuro and Jonathan Clements
Letterer: Bensidi Ayoub
I received this volume as an ARC from Titan Manga in exchange for a honest review.
Background
Burst Angel is a shonen series that serves as a prequel to the anime created by studio Gonzo. In Japan, this manga was titled "Angel's Adolescence" while the anime was called "Burst Angel".
The manga series ran in MediaWork's "Dengeki Comic Gao!" (same magazine as Speed Grapher's manga adaptation). The series was initially licensed and released in English by Tokyopop in 2008 before the company went bankrupt. In 2023, Titan Manga announced they had licensed the series for an English release.
Burst Angel is a series I knew had an anime (even though I never watched it) but wasn't aware that a manga existed for the series. I was interested to see how the series was and was looking forward to reviewing this one.
Review
The story opens up with Takeru coming home from being bullied at school. He sees the note his mom left about dinner and walks to his room only to discover a random girl! She says that this is "her room" and they argue about her living there. The boy notices something under his covers and ends up discovering another girl in his room! The boy notices that the second girl is injured, but was told by the first girl not to take her to a hospital nor contact the authorities. After a few hours, the injured girl, Jo, awakens and tells the other girl, whose name is revealed to be Meg, that they must book it before they're caught by some organization!
The story seems to be very episodic where Joe and Meg go around and take on odd jobs. It reminds me of Cowboy Bebop where after the job, they always break even whether it's due to the amount of resources used or because of Jo's humorous negligence.
Meg and Jo have the buddy cop dynamic. Meg is the jokester while Jo is the literally serious one that sometimes causes problems for Meg. This reversal keeps the humor fresh. I think it's neat and I think the duo play off each other well.
You can tell the series is older due to the art style and character design. The character designs remind me of the characters from Hellsing's manga (although Hellsing's characters had more detail). It seems fine but I would like if they added a little more detail to everything. It seems very blocky.
Another thing I noticed was that the mangaka makes it difficult to tell what time of day some of the scenes occur. This was prevalent when Jo and Meg were taking on some criminals in the harbor. I assumed it was nighttime, but it's not too clear because there are some scenes during the conflict that make it look like it's in the afternoon. It can throw you off on how long things occurred.
One complaint I have (other than the background issue) is that Takeru seemed...pointless to the entire story. While his character arc was wrapped up in volume one, he only appeared in 2 chapters (not back to back either) and didn't feel impactful. I didn't care much for his arc or development much but his return could have been given to a new character and nothing would have changed. It just seemed...odd, especially since we didn't spend much time with him in the first place so his resolution didn't seem impactful.
Final Thoughts
If you're looking for an episodic, solid classic action series consisting of girls with guns, then you'd enjoy Burst Angel. If you're looking for a story with more overarching plotline, while there are hints of that showing up in the next volume, it's nonexistent in this one so you might not enjoy this.
Verdict: Buy It On Sale
Burst Angel volume 1 from Titan Manga is now available at all retailers
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