George Akiyama's THE MOON (1972)

Well, I've been saying I want to do reviews on my very own website for a long time, but there's a slight condition to that. I don't particularly tend to think of myself as someone who has extremely unique opinions on things, so I often don't feel like I have a lot to say when it comes to media that is widely discussed. Because of this, I try to avoid reactions to things that I know might affect my own opinion of them. I want to marinate on whatever it is first before I let someone else's thoughts influence my own.

This only applies to media that has completely invaded pop culture to the point where it is unavoidable. Evangelion, John Carpenter's Halloween, Star Wars. Media where it is so ubiquitous that you will not live on this earth without hearing someone's opinion of it, or at least someone reference it in a Youtube Video, real life, what have you.

The concept mentioned above does not exist when it comes to something as specfic as this, however. And that's part of the intrigue.

To be completely clear, I did not discover George Akiyama’s “The Moon” of my own accord. I found about it from (and some of the other manga I MAYBE will review on my website will probably also be from) a book called “Manga Zombie” written by Udagawa Takeo.

A genuinely good source if you want to learn about some old, weird, controversial & forgotten manga, but not the book to read if you aren’t ready to hear the guy go off on his rants against mainstream manga (the book literally starts with him calling for mainstream shounen to be burned, lmfao. Very sorry to Takeo, but such a statement did just make me laugh out loud. I do understand, I suppose, his viewpoint in the sense that bringing attention to alternative manga seems to be his entire goal in life. Such a statement is still very funny though.)

Anyways, I won’t be talking much about Akiyama himself here, other than to repeatedly call him a madman, but rather to talk about the giant-robot manga that he wrote for Shonen Sunday in 1972-73: THE MOON.

And now we’re gonna finally fucking talk about the manga itself! Jesus christ, holy yap. THE MOON follows nine kids, led by sansuu, an incredibly determined & spirited boy. They are strangely and suddenly gifted a giant robot by a mysterious man, who tells them it will only move when all nine of them think in unison and the lights on Moon’s head all light up. He also tells them that ‘God is dead’ & so he has chosen to ‘invent his own justice’. Which he is entrusting… in the hands of nine schoolchildren, some seemingly as young as toddlers. Great fucking idea.