Icaro

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Icaro is a piece of collaboration between Moebius (real name, Jean Giraud), creating the story, and Jiro Taniguchi, being responsible for the art. The concept of a team effort between both famous french writer and japanese mangaka sure raises the bar of expectation for this manga alot, which is eventually the reason why the reader would be left with bitter taste at it's end, both creators are masters in their respective genres, but this work cerntainly doesn't solidify their fame.

The synopsys sounds grand, complex and intriguing, and nothing like that can be said for the actual content of the story, it ... does try to be metaphorical, but it's too scarse to even feel coherent. Also alot of worldbuilding concepts are thrown in the fray, but almost none of them pay off or even has any value for the plot and it's progression. The story is far too simple to be worth mentioning as such.

The art for this manga is in great detail and it's gorgeous, the only selling point of this whole work that deserves it's unconditional praise.

The characters are very basic, bland and uninteresting, some of them have odd quirks which bear no meaning to the story's worth, and half of the supporting cast is introduced, whithout not having any reason to exist in this story.

The potential that was ruined with this story is major, and the great art cannot hold the manga's worth by itself. It starts grand, and bombastic, and it's end is too simple and uninteresting, this manga is not worth it's time, I do only reccomend it to people who are completionists or to those who enjoy Jiro Taniguchi's works in general.

Icaro is stunted by two things (one of which is only valid when considering the English release). Its biggest flaw is that the translation is not particularly good. You can tell it is a literal translation of text versus a contextual translation of text. Sometimes that can work out okay, but in this case, it comes off very stale. There is clearly inflection that we are missing in what is being discussed and times where the dialogue almost makes no sense. While it is certainly possible that it is that way in the original Japanese, I find that very hard to believe. Overall, you still ... understand the story fully, but I think we lose some character nuance along the way - for an already short story this is difficult. The second issue is that it reads like a manga that was cut short. I do not actually know if that is the case or not, but it certainly has that feeling where the Mangaka had Scene 12 basically done before he was told that the title as being dropped from publication - and they just wrap it up. For some works this can still be okay if the ride along the way is very fun, but Icaro lacks some of those qualities that keep it from the 7 or higher category. Maybe if we had better text translations, we would find a bit more wonder written into things.

For the good, the overall story is actually interesting if presented in a straightforward capacity. The characters are not complex, but for short stories that is not always necessary (and again, maybe we are lacking context that would have given just a little nudge into charming). The art is good to fantastic, with some of the faces often coming off "funky" to me (still totally fine, but these are only good) whereas environment scenes and complex paneling is fantastic - an area where Taniguchi really shines.

For the great art, fine enough simple story, I think it sneaks into the recommend category - I would not spend a lot of money hunting it down though. If you are expecting a very deep story, look elsewhere. If you really want a very satisfying conclusion that makes you think or really wraps up all the different introduced elements, look elsewhere. If you want just a fun short sci-fi romance story - it is good enough to read.