Cannon God Exaxxion Stage 5

The Cannon God Exaxxion [砲神エグザクソン] #5

by Kenichi Sonoda

Life has started to look up for Hoichi Kano. Sure, he's earth's only hope of resisting an insidious alien colonization-slash-invasion. Sure, he's had to deal with the fact that every time he uses his super-powered gunsuit or the mighty robot Exaxxion to fight them, but every high school student has issues, right? Now, Hoichi is kicking butt and it looks like he has the Riofaldians on the run. He's got the girl, the guns, and his father on his side. What more could a hero need? But in the shadow of a tenuous cease-fire a battle still rages. With so much propagandized mud being slung, will anyone know who the true enemies are at the end of the day? And will anyone notice just how close the Riofaldians are to breaking through the Kano family's defenses?

Genres: Manga, Comics, Science Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published July 23, 2002

About the author

Japanese Profile: 園田健一

Sonoda Kenichi is a Japanese manga artist and animation character designer.

Reviews

[Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this series. It's not just boy-meets-giant-robot-and-trounces-alien-invasion. The alien invasion has been subtle, going on for a decade or more. The aliens have integrated into human society and shared technology that is now pervasive. This last bit is the start of the undoing of the human race. When the real intent of the aliens is made known, the old guy who has been crying wolf all this time recruits his grandson to pilot the giant robot he built to defeat the aliens. Not all goes well and quite a few pages are spent on the actual consequences of having a giant robot saunter through a large metropolitan area (Tokyo and it's districts). The soul searching by our boy-pilot hero on what he's done, not only to the buildings and infrastructure, but also the cost of human and alien lives as he tries to do the right thing was very real and something I've not seen in manga to this degree. After being shown the atrocities brought down by the aliens, he reluctantly gets back in the cockpit to fight on.

I loved Sonoda's "Gunsmith Cats" series, so I had high hopes for this series. Unfortunately, this is another series that Dark Horse began to translate, publish, collect, and then gave up on. (I can only assume for the lack of sales.) Five volumes seems to be all there will be in English. Even so, a recommended read even if you're not much of a fan of giant robots.