Aposimz vol. 2

Two volumes in and I’m still waiting for mangaka Tsutomu Nihei to shake up the storytelling here.  It’s all so familiar as vol. 2 begins with Etherow and Titania arriving in an Imperial town only to get thrown into jail after the former is suspected of suffering from Frame Disease.  This only puts him right where he wants to be in order to take out the town’s leaders, which he does with the help of another Regular Frame named Keisha. They bicker a bit as they travel and find an Imperial ship whose manifest contains a surprise.  It turns out that there was a survivor from the massacre of Etherow’s hometown and the Empire has her. Even though this could be a trap, Etherow is still convinced that this needs investigating.

That this does turn out to be a trap shouldn’t surprise anyone who read the first volume.  While I appreciated the fact that the calm and resourceful Etherow turned out to be the protagonist, vol. 1 of “Aposimz” didn’t really deviate from the shonen action playbook.  This is in spite of its sci-fi setting and action, and occasional glimpses of gory violence. These are present here as well, with the action being competently handled but otherwise unspectacular.  We do get some potentially interesting hints of worldbuilding, such as a religious organization set up around Frames, of which Titania is apparently a key figure in its orthodoxy. I’d like to see something like that given focus for the next volume, instead of the latest Frame vs. Frame fight set up at the end of this one.