Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio
Arpeggio of Blue Steel

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One day, out of nowhere, a race of sentient, hyper-advanced battleships called the Fleet of Fog appear across the earth and blockade the entire human race onto land. The humans fight back and, despite being massively behind technologically to the battleships, they do far better than expected and capture one of the ships. The Fleet of Fog reason that this is because the humans used strategy and tactics, while the Fleet of Fog have no concept of time so cannot learn from the past or predict the future. How they come to this conclusion in the first place when they supposedly can’t learn isn’t explained, ... probably because it’s a glaring plothole, but anyway. The Fleet of Fog decide to create their own humans to command each of their own battleships so they can-

Look, basically it’s moe anthropomorphised battleships.

For a concept created simply so the mangaka had an excuse to draw both cute girls and giant battleships, Arpeggio of Blue Steel has a remarkable amount of thought put into its world. The politics behind how the world reacted to the appearance of the Fleet of Fog is explored in quite a lot of detail, and the manga focuses on how the politics and alliances work after that. The early volumes are about the politics behind which country the main character has to sail to because they can’t necessarily trust other countries, or even differing political forces within Japan itself. The science going on behind the ship battles in incredibly in-depth. You can tell the author is a massive navy-nerd with the amount of technobabble that goes on.

I just wish I knew what was going on in those battles sometimes. There will be these massive two-page spreads of a battleship firing its supercharged interdimensional laser, with the ocean splitting like they’ve got Moses on board and giant explosions and waves crashing into the sides of the ships. It’s pretty impressive to look at, but there’s so much detail I can barely tell one ship for another. For the first battle in the manga, I genuinely didn’t realise until after that there was apparently 3 ships taking part rather than just 2. I admit this my own fault as I’m terrible at reading manga and can never tell what’s going on in action scenes.

I’m not going to take the blame for struggling with the tactics though. The technobabble is not just there for its own sake. All the terms they throw out actually mean something. You need a bloody glossary to keep up with the battles, which the manga does helpfully provide. Remembering them all is difficult since fuzzy science like nanomachines and interdimensional lasers are mixed in with sonars and torpedos and resonance and actual real science, but you still need to know your acoustic torpedoes from your corrosive torpedoes. There is a lot of thought put in though, so I do kinda like digging into the broader concepts of their weird science fiction, even if I am rather confused by the fact they still use sonar when they can literally part the sea.

The world building and politics are a little easier to follow, and since the science usually ends up tying into the world, the two sides complement each other quite well. The actual main story is a bit of a let-down in comparison. It’s about this gang of college graduates who have taken command of the one Fleet of Fog battleship humanity have commandeered and how they play into the much larger role of the world politics. It could be interesting certainly, but again the author has trouble conveying all that information in an understandable fashion. The manga starts halfway through the story for whatever bizarre reason. They already have the ship, one of their crew members have left, and all sorts of other things have happened by the time the story begins. I really don’t understand why they did this, since it means you have to get used to a boatload (hur hur see whut i did thar) of characters right off the bat while trying to piece together the timeline of events at the same time.

On the character front, I love the main character’s dad because he’s basically Gendo Ikari. I also like that the Prime Minister of Japan is a mute in a wheelchair. However the characterisation can be a bit all over the place, particularly with the battleship girls. The idea with them is they’re supposed to be not used to their human form and start developing emotions but don’t know how to deal with them. The one girl they do this properly with, the one with the massive coat, is probably my favourite character in the series precisely because of how they explore this side of her. On the other hand, a bunch of the other girls appear with their personality already in place, which neither makes a whole lot of sense and can also be super annoying when the girls fall into tired stereotypes.

If I’m feeling cynical, I’m willing to bet the stereotypes evolved out of the author wanting to appeal to popular archetypes for easy popularity growth. As the volumes go on, the less shots you get of massive battleships and the more it focuses on hot girls. Don’t get me wrong, the tsundere heavy cruiser does have a fine ass (now there’s a line I never thought I’d type). But if I want hot girls, I can go pretty much anywhere. However if I want a manga with massive battleships, I go to Arpeggio of Blue Steel (and maybe Zipang).

Despite all my belly-aching, I do quite like Arpeggio of Blue Steel. I wouldn’t have read 6 volumes if I didn’t. But I definitely prefer the ideas to the execution. If they did make an anime of it, there’s a lot of things I think could be improved. They could make the fights easier to follow, the story start at the actual beginning rather than halfway through, cut out some of the less important characters, and while I’m wishing for the improbable I’d also like a dakimakura of the tsundere heavy cruiser please.

This story starts out very strong in the first 30 chapters and then it drags it's feet through quicksand. The writer has decided that every character that is introduced that is not killed/destroyed is going to have their own story and be followed. This drags out the story to nowhere with no resolution on any aspect of the story. What makes it worse is the last battle in the story to be published takes up half the current produced content with 40+ chapters. If you thought Dragon Ball Z was bad at never ending battles this one takes that award away easily. It's obvious the ... writer is trying to draw out this story as long as possible to be payed as long as possible before he is dropped from the publication. Skip this.

I'll keep it short and simple. This manga is fantastic. Yes it does have an anime adaptation but they are basically 2 different universes as I said in my Candenza movie review but both are really good. The storyline in this manga I must say is better than in the animes. It's deeper and more realistic. The storyline has a more meaningful character development rather than the anime and it seems like a more realistic scenario compared to the anime. All in all looking at the manga and anime as two different universes with the same characters both nearly score perfect scores. One flaw I ... have with the manga is that since there are sooo many WWII ships all the characters get confusing and ultimately leave the reader lost sometimes. Also I was a really big fan of the 3d animated version so i'm only giving the art for the manga a 9 even though I also think it's fantastic. Overall this manga is a 9.9/10 and we just need to wait for it to actually end so I can give it a true final rating.

A complex manga that remains immersive and interesting throughout. The slow pacing works well, as the author clearly wanted to include many details and connect the plots as all sub-factions converge to find meaning and bridge the gap between man and machine. In this sense it is kind of a mix between Ghost in the Shell and Kancolle with a bit more flair.

Art:
So first off, the art is amazing. Since it is mostly set at sea the artist must have had a fair amount of time to add detail to the ships. They manage to capture the historic grit of WWII ships and merge that ... with a sort of cyber-neon interpretation of AI if it had a physical form.The effects and battle scenes are pretty easy to follow while keeping the detail of the ships and occasional landscapes and facilities. Of course the mental models themselves are expressive and pretty nice to look at too.

Plot/Setting:
The beauty of this manga is in the details as it is essentially a simulation of how 2 different main plot lines intersect and the consequences on the world.

The 1st plot line follows our human heroes as they attempt to help breach the blockade of the Fog and reunite human nations to stand against a seemingly impossible enemy.

The 2nd plot line is a consequence of the 1st and follows the Fog in their attempts to understand human adaptability and motivations, and in doing so they become more human and want to find purpose beyond their programmed objective.

This style and setting creates a good mix of thrilling action, political drama, peaceful character exploration/development, and a hint of mystery that still has me hooked and waiting for volume 20 to release.

Characters:
You could call this a deep manga, but I feel "fleshed-out" is a better term. There are many on-going characters introduced, some not so important, some that aren't important till later, and some that remain important throughout. They all get some level of development that feels natural within the story and sub-plots, and there are no instances of sudden, direct character growth. Growth is gradual and tied to actions and consequences rather than off-panel events and backstory. This is why the overarching plots take so long to tell and can be both very immersive as well as frustrating at times due to slow plot progression, but tends to work in favour of the manga.

Enjoyment:
I thoroughly enjoy reading this manga. It is immersive with the characters, and they learn from events that the reader sees. Everything matters, and in manga format this style works well given we can read at whatever pace we desire. That said sub-plots might not come together for several volumes, so you probably won't enjoy this one if you prefer short sharp and to the point styles of storytelling.

Anime vs Manga notes:
The anime adaptations are vastly different to the manga in plot and characters. The anime starts diverging from the manga near the end of episode 1, and the finale is equivalent to volume 13 of the manga... but you might as well read from the beginning.

The anime has significantly more fanservice and the drastically changed plot allows for a beach episode which could not happen in the manga. It is a more fun and focused man against the world sort of story that excludes many details, events, and characters in order to be more generally appealing.

The manga is far more complex as it imagines how the consequences of various events and actions affect the world instead of just Japan, as well as how events from around the world might affect Japanese politics. As a result it introduces characters from around the world, including other Fog fleets.