Ark Performance

Ooh, so close. The first half of the book was set almost entirely on the I-401 and actually had some good character moments with the crew as a tense action scene was set up against the primary enemy fleet. But the creator couldn't maintain the focus and the second half of the book went careening around the world to visit with all the politicians and military leaders and other enemy fleets I could not care less about. I'm not ready to ditch this series yet, but watch, the next volume will be show more all about the stupid politicians again. So frustrating. show less

The quality of this series increases dramatically whenever it actually focuses on the crew of the 401 -
as happens in this volume - even if some of their battle maneuvers are a bit hard to follow.

Unfortunately, the preview for the next volume threatens, "And what's been happening with everyone else...?!" Nooooooo! Haruna is the only character who is not on the 401 who should ever be allowed steal screen time from the crew.

This series is growing ever more maddening. Nothing ever happens. This book is 90% people sitting around talking about boring stuff. And frankly, I can barely remember who most of these talking heads even are anymore. The only action sequence is the firing of a couple of warning shots before a tactical retreat. And in the midst of all the politics and military maneuvering, the most important thing in the world becomes throwing a school festival???

And yet, because of a single scene about one show more of the artificial intelligence avatars being commanded to go fishing, I'll be picking up the next volume. When it's cute, it's super cute. show less

Well, the series has taken a real downturn as the sheer number of characters shoehorned into this volume makes it nearly incomprehensible. A nice battle scene is ruined by all the unnecessary political intrigue and long scenes of characters sitting around guessing at other characters' motivations. I'm here for pretty girls on boats blowing stuff up, not old generals and senators and ship captains harrumphing. I like the crew of the 401 but I'm getting tired of having half of their enemies show more being their allies and half of their allies being their enemies and nearly all of them being unnecessary to what could be a much more focused plot. This seems to be a common problem with this kind of manga, as Attack on Titan and World Trigger also started to go downhill as the story tried to become more epic. Too bad. show less