Date: 1997
Type: oneshot
Length: 32 pages
Availability: in RK#28
Last updated:
2007 June 28
Author: Kaeli
Meteor Strike
This is the story of a high school student who is hit by a meteor and has a splinter of it locked in his skull, granting him super strength. Nobuhiro Watsuki is a great fan of super hero comics, and it is indeed pretty easy to see similarities between Meteor Strike and super hero stories such as Spider-man.
Shinya is a very idealistic boy, who often does what he perceives to be the right thing, despite his incapability to actually succeed. As a consequence the boy gets beaten up a lot, injured a lot, and constantly has to be protected by his best friend, Chiho, who is extremely protective of Shinya.
She tells him that withour power, it is no use acting heroic. Shinya disagrees, saying that even if he fails, he still has to try.
Things change when Shinya is hit by a meteor and gains strange new powers through it. Suddenly he has the powers to achieve his goals, and begins helping out the entire town with basically all of their problems and chores. He is popular and he is content. But Chiho does not like it, and feels that the townspeople are exploiting Shinya. She prefers the old Shinya, who got himself in trouble for acting impulsively, and needed her protection. Possibly, she just does not like to lose her role in his life.
The story reaches its climax when a big meteor is racing towards the town. Shinya decides that he will try to stop it using his powers...
Meteor Strike was written during the publication of Kenshin, as Watsuki's entry in a Jump-internal competition. In his author's notes, Watsuki clearly says that he considers the story flawed, and it might have been better had he invested a bit more time, and used more pages. Indeed, the story is simple and a bit silly, and neither Shinya nor Chiho are particularly interesting characters.
Nevertheless, Meteor Strike presents a very nice take on the Hero theme, which plays a role in almost every manga of Watsuki.
Just like in Kenshin and in Busou Renkin, the hero gains power and chooses to use them to do what he thinks is the right thing. Both the powers are important, and the intent. In Shinya, the intent has always been there, and the meteor gve him the missing power. It is speculated even inside the story whether the meteor might even have chosen Shinya because he had the right mindset.
Meteor Strike makes two points: Intent without power is useless. but power without intent is equally useless, and maybe, if you have the intent and you try, you will gain the powers you require.
All in all, this is a very nice, optimistic thought, and a very fitting message for a shounen manga.
The artwork is in the style around the middle of the Kyoto Arc, which I personally like a lot. The high school setting does not leave much room for stunning character design, though, and Shinya and Chiho are the only characters who are at least a bit personalized. The supporting characters are all nothing more than clichés. Which is not as bad as it may sound, because this is presented with such honesty that it's almost funny. The same applies to the story, which I really find silly and cheesy from time to time, but if you don't take it too seriously, you can easily enjoy it.
And as mentioned above, it's fun to interprete, and presents one more, very nice, take on Nobuhiro Watsuki's favourite theme: heroism.
Trivia:
According to Nobuhiro Watsuki's end notes for Rurouni Kenshin, Shinya is also the name of Yahiko's and Tsubame's son.
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August 17th, 2002 - 2007 by Kaeli (kaeli@gmx.de)
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