In the late 1980s, Silent Möbius crossed genres, age and gender barriers, utilizing all the various media available at the time; anime, manga, voice drama. It was even melded fantasy and science-fiction in it’s own way. Nothing about Silent Möbius was specifically original, but taken together it was unique. And it had an ending, which at the time was also a little unusual. The women of the Attacked Mystification Police or AMP for short, were tasked with saving the earth from the invading demon-like beings of Nemesis, known as Lucifer Hawks.
Silent Möbius QD (サイレントメビウスQD) begins a few years after the end of the first series. Rally Cheyenne, founder of AMP, still is CEO of the police. AMP is now comprised of several teams. In Volume 1, we are introduced to the new members of Team Woofer, Team Squawker, Team Tweeter and Team Equalizer…and in those team names you may recognize the technophile hand of the new chief of AMP, Lebia Maverick. Rather than go into detail on the new characters, of which there were many, check out this handy intro to the new faces.
Rally continues to be chief of police, Lebia has taken over as chief of AMP. No other characters have returned thus far, but that’s perfectly fine. Volume one is primarily setting up the new AMP teams and their members, with a focus on the somewhat curmudgeonly Makijima Aoi, whose partner Haifa takes one in the chest for Aoi…who, we come to see, has serious issues about being partnered with anyone. Most mysterious of all, Aoi wields our old friend the wizard’s sword Grospoliner. How and why are left unresolved at the end of volume 1.
As the book opens, we can see that Re-Tokyo is as much as target for 3rd attraction attacks as ever before, and that AMP’s team is more multicultural, and now includes non-humans as well.
Aoi basically mopes through the volume as everyone around her fights their hearts out, until Lebia sends Aoi to the bowels of headquarters to confront the Lucifer Hawk in the basement, who, unnervingly, takes a human form, declares herself Aoi’s new partner and asks to be called Chris. Maybe it’s me, but I found that hilariously out of place after the death and destruction, action and drama of the rest of the “overture,” as the chapters here are titled.
Lebia interested me. She seems to have more than one body now, which makes sense, as you may remember that her consciousness is all but infinite and fully networked. One of these bodies is that of a little girl, thus allowing or maybe requiring Asamiya to have a little moe in this volume. The uniform skirts are shorter than ever. I was almost disappointed in these tiresome ruses for service. I’d always pointed to Silent Möbius as a series that was mature about enjoying the adult female body without resorting to creeping. Apparently nothing in manga is allowed to be mature and non-creepy anymore. I weep for future generations of women.
There is no Yuri, there never was, but it is obvious that Aoi and Haifa’s relationship, of which we see only the violent end, was fraught and intense. I hope that Chris and Aoi’s is equally fraught and intense.
Ratings:
Art – 8 It was nice to not quite be able to see the Lucifer Hawks again
Story – 8 Solid stuff for this series
Characters – There are a lot of them, but I hope we get to learn a bit about PAL and a few others.
Yuri – 0
Service – 4
Overall – 8
This series has already wrapped up after 2 volumes, the second of which will be out in December 2015, so I don’t expect the kind of detailed, complex plot we had with the first series, but I have to say it was really nice to see AMP again. ^_^
