MISC. MANGA, *Silbuster

During the mid-90s, the manga market was making its mark in the American geek world, and alot of these weren't done directly through the general Japanese publishers. Several titles were obtained from the underground doujinshi market, which even though a large portion of it is made up of "fan comics", a good portion of it is original material. One of these was a mature but silly sci-fi superhero sentai sage titled Silbuster, done by Ikkou Sahara. Combining elements of Iczer-One, Ultraman, and various Super Robots anime, this was an ongoing spoof saga of supergirls vs. giant monsters.

The Earth is being invaded by mysterious aliens constantly sending spies in human disguise to infiltrate military secrets, along with them occasionally mutating into city destroying kaiju. Doctor Kizuki is helping to prep mankind's best chance, a spaceship named Starlight, along with his middle daughter Mitsuha being genetically altered into a superhuman. After her father is killed by the aliens, Mistuha takes on the codename of Silbuster to battle the space invaders, with her powers of super-strength, finger beams, and the abilty to transform into a giant with an expanding costume, even though her first time going big resulted in her fighting a monster totally naked. Silbuster works with her techinal expert older sister Mitsuho, along with her part time Playboy bunny younger sister Mitsuka to prevent the aliens from advancing their plans. Silbuster also learns kickboxing from the enigmatic Masked Boxer to gain a fighting advantage over kaiju stomping rampages.

The manga went on to be released as 19 seperate issues in English through Antarctic Press, which got two collected edition making for only less than half of its run being covered in graphic novels. Like numerous doujinshi titles translated into English, Silbuster never actually reached its conclusion, possibly due to several of the original fan comics not achieving an ending because of the mangaka being hired into the official manga market. Ikkou Sahara's work has a unique style similar to Artmic and AIC anime from the late 80s, with a love of tokusatsu TV shows that later on went to influence Super Sentai and Power Rangers. There's some cheeky humor and gratuitous fan service throughout the manga, making it not meant for younger readers, but old school otaku will likely favor it as just reading it takes them back to the Golden Age of "Japanimation".