The Legend Of Mother Sarah 1 (of 8)

Short Review: Interesting, secretive drama with epic scale.

Katsuhiro Otomo's stories can be easily characterised as a small situation is reflected in a larger one. In Akira, a motorbike gang member's anger and frustration are amplified to a threat to the city, while in Domu, A Child's Dream, a fight between two childlike psychics had repercussions for everyone living in the same block of flats. In this story, Otomo has broadened his scale of operations to the whole planet, and highlighted the difference in magnitude by speeding through the global effects, and spending a lot of time on the personal battle that will almost certainly be at the centre soon.

The first issue starts and ends with the trek through the desert of the title character, Mother Sarah. In the first text piece, which looks suspiciously like a "What Came Before" segment, Otomo tells us that the Earth has withstood two major changes in seven years: firstly, a nuclear holocaust which forced the survivors into space, to live in a satellite space station; and secondly, a cleaner bomb, designed to tilt the axis of the earth, and provide a pleasant climate for the southern hemisphere, which the bomb left unirradiated, but turned into desert. This second bomb will take three years to completely reconfigure the Earth's climate, but due to it's unauthorised detonation, it brings civil war to the space station, and forces the inhabitants to return to an inhospitable earth.

This story is told in half a page of text, with the remainder of the issue being devoted to the tale of Sarah's separation from her husband, also an underground supporter of the anti-bomb group, and her children in the time immediately before the destruction of the space shuttle by their group's terrorist reaction to the totalitarian government of the pro-bomb people. It's a tension filled piece inside the space shuttle, balanced by the impressive scenes of desolation back on the planet. For the most part, nothing happens in the "present" day, but the promise is most definitely there.