To Terra...: Volume 3

Here it is. The final volume of To Terra. This one picks up several years after the end of the last volume. Jomy Marcus Shin, leader of the telepathic Mu, has decided to go to war with humans and force them to acknowledge the Mu's right to exist. On the other side of the galaxy, the series's primary antagonist, Keith Anyan, has climbed his way up the ranks to lead Terra's military bureaucracy. On the surface, he's completely in line with the will of the Mother Computer, a cold AI system that rules like a dictator over humanity and wants the Mu wiped out, but on the inside his resolve to go through with the genocide is clearly wavering. Adding something of a third faction to the mix are the evolved Mu children, abnormally strong psychics who unlike normal Mu were born physically whole and hearty. They have the only weapons that can take on the superior might of the Terrans, but they also realize that if the Mu and Terrans make peace, they might find themselves the new personas non grata. Although this is the shortest volume and the most action heavy it still manages to work in some great character moments and some last revelations. I imagine the ending, along with the reason for the hostility between the Mu and Terrans, will make a lot of people really unhappy but it completely fits with the themes at the heart of the series. My big complaint is that the last ten odd pages should have been cut, starting with the scene of the Terrans gathering worshipfully around the blind Mu prophetess, Physis. The entire epilogue is pretty hokey and doesn't really add much to ending except act as a weak attempt to put a big smiley face on a tragic conclusion. To Terra is a wonderful manga series that shouldn't be over looked because of its age.