Etherow’s seemingly routine training exercise with fellow residents of White Diamond Beam starts the beginning of the end, as their involvement with mysterious automaton Titania, and most importantly Rebedoan Empire forces, ends up leading to the destruction of their homeland. However, only Etherow survives after he has no choice but to turn into a frame in order to live. And after 90 days of suffering its after-effects, he joins up with Titania to stop the Empire from completing its mission: taking over the Central Control level and conquering the planet.
Tsutomu Nihei’s newest work really throws you right into the fire. As in, you can argue any character you meet is on the move like they need to meet a deadline. But, through everyone’s actions and the seemingly detached detail of each setting, you quickly get a sense of where everything stands: The Empire is an overwhelming and unbearable force on the world of Aposimz, with people just doing their best to stay alive. This essentially assumes they don’t even kill you because they can. This has been that way for a while now, and with only a few people who desire to stop them.
Etherow, however, didn’t. As a resident of White Diamond Beam, he shows off his combat experience and marksmanship, but that’s all. With Zezo, White Diamond Beam’s leader, and the people he knew, he was fine being just that. But one wrong move by one of his subordinates leads him to saving Titania. That move leads to the eventual end of everything there. Now he feels like he only has one thing to do: understand what Titania has taken from the Empire and use it to stop them.
The first two volumes of APOSIMZ might be a bit tough to get into because the art feels super light. Hard to fully describe, but while overall you can see this is done by a long-time artist, the way some of the characters look or how the action occurs can be hard to follow — at first. You might even think some of these frames look the same if you line them up on the page. This is likely the part where you’ll either be able to adjust to it or it won’t work out.
When it does work out though, it’s quite interesting. There are not only battles between frames, but battles that involve automatons of various sizes. We also see how the unstable environment affects people, and it’s not great for them. So once there’s an understanding of how everything flows, the action and pace pick up considerably.
If the art is still an issue though, thankfully the story and the setting is worth following. It’s the usual good guys rising to try and stop a terrible entity, and we follow this through someone who has to learn what’s really happening in his world. He learns everything from Titania, who has the Empire targeting her, and she herself is not an ordinary automaton. Through her and soon enough on his travels he comes to learn what’s occurring isn’t acceptable — but whether he can do anything about it is up in the air.
He also ends up learning more about frames, getting stronger, and killing them on his quest to stop the Empire. So far only a few types of frames have been shown in these first two volumes. But there will be more — this is coming from someone who’s read the simulpubs on Crunchyroll. It certainly has been interesting looking back at these early volumes, and know there’s still a lot more action that’s going to happen.
So to sum things up, APOSIMZ throws you into its world, but does so in a way where we can understand what’s happening in it. There’s still more to come — we meet Keisha, who is part of a resistance aiming to stop the Empire, and more Rebedoan enemies appear, and one of them tests Etherow emotionally — but so far, it’s some strong stuff.