Jan 25, 2013
Have you ever been reading a battle manga and thought, "there's too much dialogue, it's covering up the sound effects."? Or read something with 50+ volumes of plot and backstory and thought, "I don't need to know all this, I just want pictures of movement progressing through time."? Then this is the manga for you.
New Engineering, to use the English translation's name, collects 24 short works, ranging from nearly 30 pages down to only one. Calling them stories is a bit of a stretch. Story seems to imply character, plot, development, something. The ones with dialogue could probably
...
be counted on one hand. Some were drawn to go with articles that are not in the book. The author admits in the afterword that one of the single page works was a poster he couldn't even sell.
Most of the works fall into one of two categories, either fighting or fabricating. No explanation is ever given for why things are made, or why people fight. A large variety of sound effects in both Katakana and English are used prominently. Thankfully they are translated at the bottom of the page, with some of the drawings it is hard to tell what is happening-are they rolling AstroTurf, sod or carpet, for example. Not to say the drawings aren't incredible, they are, but there is a surreal absurdness to them all such that any notion of what might logically happen next is lost.
Overall, New Engineering is like an art museum. You may or may not like some, or even any of the works, but the pictures are well made and looking at them is culturally edifying. And if you try, you might just find something that speaks to your soul.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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