"Wombs" has a totally bonkers premise, but here goes: on the planet Hekiou, two successive generations of colonizers fight a war over resources. In order to stand a fighting chance, the first generation implants cells from the planet's alien inhabitants into the wombs of female soldiers (???) so that they can teleport (????) whole squads of combatants quickly across the planet. Our heroine Mana Oga is one of those soldiers. But has she been told the full story?
"Wombs" is part character drama, part military science fiction, part puzzle box. The individual pieces of the comic may seem random, even irresponsible, at first. But those pieces snap together in surprising and satisfying ways over the comic's five volumes. Similarly, the art is unpolished at first glance but has a sense of flow and character expression that keeps things interesting. Shirai is particularly good at drawing the landscapes Mana and her teammates pass through, which is convincingly alien throughout.
"Wombs" earned plenty of acclaim in its day, winning the Nihon SF Taisho Award as well as a coveted jury selection at the prestigious Japan Media Arts Festival. Jocylene Allen, translator of "Our Dreams at Dusk" and "BL Metamorphosis," is a big fan. So why hasn't the series been licensed in the US? Did publishers think the premise would turn people off?
Some years ago, modern TV anime was starting to bore me. It was "Wombs," along with another comic I may talk about later, that reminded me that manga was always my first love. The series was originally published in Monthly IKKI, a magazine that carried similarly groundbreaking work like "Dorohedoro," "Gunjo" and "Witches." IKKI is no longer around, but I'll always remember that magazine fondly for publishing daring comics like this.
