Mars Madness #3 - Terra Formars (Manga & Anime)

In an attempt to colonize Mars, 21st century scientists are tasked with terraforming the planet. Their goal is to seed the planet with a modified algae to absorb sunlight and purify the atmosphere, and cockroaches, whose corpses spread the algae across the planet as they feed, breed, and die.

Five hundred years later, the first crewed ship to Mars lands and its six crew members are attacked by giant mutated humanoid cockroaches with incredible physical strength, later labeled "Terraformars"; the crew is wiped out after sending a warning back to Earth. Two years later, BUGS II, a multinational expedition of genetically modified humans, is sent to collect 10 samples of both sexes of roaches, and exterminate the mutated bugs to take control of the red planet. Only two survivors manage to return to Earth, one swearing to return and avenge their fallen companions. As a third expedition is assembled questions are raised about the true origin of the Terraformars and their connection with an unknown disease afflicting mankind, the Alien Engine Virus, or A.E. Virus. To fight the Terraformars' strength and agility, members of the second and third expedition undergo genetic modification to inherit the characteristics of other organisms, only possible after having a special organ implanted.

Transcript

Intro

What is up all you crabby bois and buggy girls? Welcome to The World is My Burrito, a podcast where I alter the digital structure of the Ribonucleic acid (RNA for short), allowing me to fuse it with bugs and mammals and cephalopods and crustaceans -oh god the cephalopods and crustaceans- , so that I may create the most eclectic and delectable burrito for your eating pleasure.

Today is August 12th 2024 and we are covering the first 18 volumes of the still ongoing manga Terra Formars by writer Yū Sasuga and artist Kenichi Tachibana. Nothing special has happened on my podcast so let’s just move right into the

Synopsis

In an attempt to colonize Mars, 21st century scientists are tasked with terraforming the planet. Their goal is to seed the planet with a modified algae to absorb sunlight and purify the atmosphere, and cockroaches, whose corpses spread the algae across the planet as they feed, breed, and die.

Five hundred years later, the first crewed ship to Mars lands and its six crew members are attacked by giant mutated humanoid cockroaches with incredible physical strength, later labeled "Terraformars"; the crew is wiped out after sending a warning back to Earth. Two years later, BUGS II, a multinational expedition of genetically modified humans, is sent to collect 10 samples of both sexes of roaches, and exterminate the mutated bugs to take control of the red planet. Only two survivors manage to return to Earth, one swearing to return and avenge their fallen companions. As a third expedition is assembled questions are raised about the true origin of the Terraformars and their connection with an unknown disease afflicting mankind, the Alien Engine Virus, or A.E. Virus. To fight the Terraformars' strength and agility, members of the second and third expedition undergo genetic modification to inherit the characteristics of other organisms, only possible after having a special organ implanted.

Hot take

I do not like this anime or manga and would only recommend it if you really love having your action and drama constantly interrupted by everything. Literally everything. Volume 1 is great, 2 is okay, but my first note of confusion stable storytelling falling apart is in volume 3. 

I am still very very interested in watching the live action movie directed by Takashi Miike because he can do no wrong. 

Personal history/Why choose this topic?

Well it has “Mars” in the name. And it’s popular. And I started the anime years ago. So I figured, “Why not?” Then learned why not.

I watched Season 1 of the anime on Crunchyroll before going to the manga. There is a Season 2 out there but Crunchy doesn’t have it and I didn’t feel like sailing the seas after how godawful those first 13 episodes were.

This is a pretty lightweight burrito -definitely more like a taquito- as there are very few ingredients, so we’ll start with creator history

Ingredients - Creator History

We only know that Yū was born in 1988. Terra Formars is the only thing to his name. Crazy how there is so little info here.

Meanwhile, Tachibana born some time in 1977 has two Manga Grand Prix Awards and an honorable mention. He’s worked on a couple of series and one shots before finally landing on Terra Formars. I could have said more but the first award was for doujin so it seemed like stopping there was the best decision.

Manga History

Terra Formars is an adventure/horror/sci-fi created for the Seinen -or young adult- demographic which began printing in Miracle Jump between January 2011 through December of the same year totaling 6 chapters.

Afterwards it moved to Weekly Young Jump and ran pretty strong through March 2017 when Yū came down with an illness. He hopped back on in April of 2018, knocked out a few chapters, then went back on hiatus due to the same sickness. Earlier this year its return was announced to begin at the end of this month. 

Right now the main story is at 226 chapters across 22 volumes. There are some one shots and short side stories out there so the printed franchise is around 240 chapters total.

Anime History

Season 1 of the anime ran from September 27, 2014 - December 20, 2014 with 13 episodes. Season 2, also known as Terra Formars: The Revenge ran from April 2, 2016 - June 25, 2016 also covering 13 episodes.

There are some pretty stark differences in stylistic approach between Seasons 1-2 but apparently Liden Film animated both.

Let’s get into the meat of it with that

Spoiler Warning

If you don’t want this 

-now was his time to warn his people- 

burrito spoiled 

-throughout the ages on planet earth, in the country of Mexico, there is still dispute about the usage of the word burrito- 

then find a nice Tupperware 

-it was originally a regional term stemming from Guanajuato, Guerrero, Michoacán (Me’chowa-can), San Luis Potosí and Sinaloa- 

with a good seal 

-the orignal word was still “taco” throughout the rest of Mexico, but in modern times may be referred to as “tacos de harina”- 

maybe wrap it in some aluminum foil 

-now popularly used across the United States of America- 

So you can throw it in a toaster oven or on a nice cast iron griddle when you're ready 

-it has found a meaning of its own. And that meaning is: kill coackroaches-

To get it nice and crispy without leaking any ju-us.

I kid you not, this is the entirety of the anime and most of the manga. And this is at it’s most comprehensible.

The Meat - The Topic

This is a very normal shonen story with an edge-lordy seinen edge. That is, this is a child’s story with barely an adult’s approach. I’m mostly going to focus on the manga but let’s just do a very quick start with the anime. 

Most of the people listening to this are probably creatives. Be it audio, video, photos, graphic design, metalworking, woodworking, whatever.

If you got into the medium when you were much younger, you likely went through the gamut of filters available in your first app: distorted video filters, funky audio filters, flashy transitions, etc. Or various tools and techniques if you worked with something physical. There was probably a point when you applied more than one filter, tool, or technique to a single project because you thought it was cool. You’re new to this. The endless possibilities have completely absorbed you.

Down the line you learn there is a limit to what should be done at once. Maybe don’t use a dozen filters in one digital project or maybe don’t use every jointing technique on a single cabinet. The sweet spot of form, function, and general artistry often means you work much harder to do less, not more. The best of the photos I’ve ever photoshopped look the least edited. The photos I have that have the most done to them have the least edited. So if you look at my stuff you’ll see I like a lot of wild stuff. That’s easy. It’s when you have to repair something back into realism like skin tones, lighting, makeup, that’s where it requires real effort that you’re not supposed to notice. So yeah I can put tons of effort into something that looks beautiful but normal.

The anime straight up abuses the free filters in whatever video software they were using. It is not used sparingly or selectively. It’s wild with filters, hard cuts, audio crossing from scene to scene. People will be in the middle of a fight -hard cut to a few seconds of backstory- hard cut back to the fight. It honestly feels like a 14 year old’s first project. And this came AFTER the manga.

This is where I’ll leave the anime, but you’ll see a theme when I breakdown the manga.

Also, you’re gonna hear me compare this to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure a lot. There are certainly many similarities, but I think it was made similar to Baki the Grappler, which released only a few years prior. Both JJBA and Baki are extremely dramatic 99% of the time and very ridiculous with their action sequences and the injuries characters are able to overcome. However, they are aware of this and take their own unique routes to balance this within the story.

1. The Stakes

General 

The stakes are always so high. But it quickly reaches this point where the stakes are so high that high stakes are the low bar, so being high is just what it is

This is listed as a horror and there is a lot of deception but you always know that either something bad is about to happen if things are going well or something good is about to happen if they’re going bad. And you may be thinking to yourself, “Kory, that’s how storytelling works”. And you’d be mostly right. But this is like the original G.I. Joe cartoon, giving you whiplash with all the good and bad occurring page by page. Many of the resolutions are very boring, then every so often you’ll get one that’s just too uncalled for. Alternatively, when bad things happen they’re never that bad and end in a very immediate resolution or they kill off characters we don’t know about or barely care about leaving no impact.

Now, Jose and Shaggy, you may also be saying, “But Kory, the stakes in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure are identical in that there is always a quick resolution” and you’d mostly be right. Except the whole show is quintessentially so dumb yet extreme that you’re always looking forward to whatever bullshit Araki pulls out of his ass. And it’s always some wild thing you never could have guessed, where as Terra Formars is always “more medicine”. And JoJo’s does this thing where everything is given a chance to breathe. Terra Formars is just “oh it’s bad. Oh it’s good. Oh it’s bad. Oh it’s worse. Oh it’s fine.” Page after page. I’m also deducting points because no male with the physique of a Roman god ever wears a thong with a dick flap. If you know you know.

The medicine

The crux of the story is the medicine needed to turn these people into their animal forms, but right off the bat these roaches invade the annex 1, make a b-line for the cargo hold, then destroy their vast supply of transformation medicine leaving only the backup. This is volume 3 and yet not only do these 100 passengers have plenty of medicine remaining, they have shitloads. Plenty of people use multiple at once or pass multiple needles to someone who runs out. At no point in time is there ever a lack of medicine.

Organ Transplant

Nobody in the story has failed the organ transplant. There is so much dialogue about how difficult it is, but in the 18 volumes I read there’s never a failure. We’re only shown successes. In the beginning we’re given the trio of friends: Alex, Marcos, and Sheila. So much focus is put on them and the 36% pass rate. Yū totally laid the groundwork for one of them to die then abandoned it, instead choosing to kill off Sheila in an otherwise dull moment. This is only a problem later when they continue to not shut up about the 36%.

Injury

You ever watch Demon Slayer? I’m sure most of those listening have not. The MCs can get the shit beat out of them, get every bone in their body broken, have no access to Senzu beans or DragonBalls, then somehow they’re just kinda perpetually okay enough to keep going. That’s this. The people mixed Cephalopods and crustaceans have an excuse but beyond that, there is no healing medicine. Yū openly speaks to the depth of injury and how certain people don’t have healing factors, but it never matters. Much, much, MUCH later in the story Yū randomly decides they should probably offhandedly mention something like a healing medicine then just ignores that, too.

Sleep

Is One of the few things the anime did far better than the manga by addressing its necessity on the battlefield early on. But in the manga these people just keep going for days on end before thinking about it. I would accept a BS reason like “they don’t need sleep” except Yū feels the need to mention how a lack of sleep can negatively affect them before ignoring it.

Moving on to main point number 2:

2. The interruptions

This is probably the most important of all topics because of how pervasive it is. This manga might only reach 60 chapters if they removed the unnecessary backstory, scientific data, engineering data, etc. And I don’t have any inherent problem with that. The problem is when that hard data constantly fills up pages to make up for what isn’t there, like character or story depth. In the previous episode I mentioned that Alita: Mars Chronicle rides out a lot of quote-unquote unnecessary details then provides you with a whole section of info at the end or very neatly tucked away footnotes at the bottom of a page. It does not interfere with whatever is currently happening.

 Somewhere along the lines, Yū seems to have figured this out in the wrong way. Instead of completely moving biological information about an animal to its own page, he continued to fill action sequences with info and STILL dedicated one full page to even more random info that was only excluded because it doesn’t actually have anything to do with anything.

Speech and bubble style and placement is the greatest of all offenders in here. It should be a crime to stack so many internal monologues, thoughts, book quotes, conversations, and narration across so many individual pages. But if you’re gonna do it, at least use decades old methods of keeping track. One of the easiest ways to keep track of what text belongs to what is by assigning a specific font style, speech box style, or combo for each individual one. I’m sure you’ve seen an example of someone speaking in person to someone on the phone. The first person text box is round with regular font while the phone text box is square -maybe has little electric flourishes on a corner or two- with italic font. And while this manga does that, it’s like each page is on some kind of randomizer. There was one point where a very noticeable font was chosen to indicate narration on one page but on the next it was internal dialogue. I’m confident this happened a few times but had been attributing previous offenses to Japanese quirks.

Main point #3

3. The timing

The timing of anything is usually terrible. The first thing that stands out Liu’s backstory… AFTER he dies. It combines his tragic childhood upbringing with his adult motivations. All we learn in the end is: the guy who was a traitor to the cause was also a traitor to the treacherous cause. That’s not depth. That’s the oily film on top of your morning coffee.

There’s supposed to be a huge reveal nearing the very end of the Mars story that Joe, the #1 strongest dude in the entire bunch, actually put the roaches inside the Annex in the beginning of the story. Which does not matter. They barely killed anyone and the ones they did kill weren’t high ranking nor were they absolutely necessary to the mission. They didn’t reveal any captain’s abilities. And they didn’t even take down the ship. The overwhelming number of roaches that attacked the ship upon entering the atmostphere happened without his direction. The crash and events afterwards were always going to happen. On top of that, he was never actively doing anything underhanded. His first action had no real impact then suddenly he turns on the very people he was fighting alongside.

It tells us in context Joe is an asshole then gives the backstory iterating Joe has always been an asshole. Which we already know. It tells us that his team were basically clones or something which doesn’t matter because we never meet him or his team until so late in the story. He kills a few captains but fails in the end. If you want to create a good villain, at least have them doing something all the time. One of my favorite villains is the Russian in From Russia With Love. He’s always foiling Bond’s plans from afar, posing as a friend, and only meets him in person at the end. You don’t even have to show Joe doing the thing, just make THAT the reveal.

Something else that would have been fun under different circumstances is the The Anti-TerraFormar Vibrating Ninja Sword, introduced in the 8th or 9th volume. It is the wildest weapon that comes out of nowhere then afterwards we get a flashback about its storage on the ship then an unnecessary explanation of its abilities. This is yet another great example of something that could have been hinted at in volume 2 or 3 then rewarded in volume 8. It’s like Czechov using the gun before introducing it. That’s now how it works.

Likes/Dislikes

Likes: Pretty drawings. When we get them.

All of it falls apart the longer it goes. Just everything. Overall progression, The backstory, action, rules, it all begins falling apart during critical moments.

We are given many examples of delinquents or ruffians being part of this crew of 100 strangers yet there never seems to be a lack of proper teamplay.

Like, this isn’t storytelling at all. It’s just data sacrificing the story

Digression: 2 characters in a car, one is asking the other about going to dinner. Rejection, brings up the time they went to a batting range which somehow lead to her hearing about an NFL scout who went to Saitama Japan and found a beast of a kid who was scouted for a shitload of money, turned it down and volunteered for Ichi Security, Then she goes into the changing in earth ranking system and how the scouted kid isn’t related to Joe. We get about 2 pages of a break then have to learn about the engineering of Tokyo Tower, the makeup of a microwave pulse bomb, more Tokyo tower facts, the history of the god of silkworms, to a combo of history of annex 1 and “where are they now”, including the people who we just learned where they were in this volume with previous information. This all takes 37 pages. Only 5 have nothing to do with any information.

It is offensive that there are prequels or separate stories. All this does is interrupt itself with dumb stuff that has no bearing on anything. Why not just tell the full story?

“He had all of this planned from the beginning” makes it all even worse. There’s so much filler only for us to leave Mars so quickly. There is no “return”, they’re just home and somehow one of the strongest living fighters sucks at the job he already had.

Resource Material

• Terra Formars Wiki
• CrunchyRoll for the official return announcement
• Wikipedia was totally useless

Nacho Business

• Pokemon Unite
• Neatcast episode
• Dream Scenario
• Probably reading too much for a future episode

Call to action/Goodbye

We’re at the end now. Have you experienced Terra Formars before? If so, What did you think of it?

Be it on this topic or anything whatsoever, you can find me on social media at TWIMBPodcast or email me at TWIMBPodcast@gmail.com