Writing a review for a Nihei Manga is kind of tricky. Do you draw comparisons with the his previous works like Blame!, Biomega etc? Or do you come up with something that may capture the imagination of some other fellow readers to go out and buy the manga?

The story starts like any other generic sci-fi storylines.... it is an unforgiving world, where the people living on the surface are subjected to brutalities and hardship to the extreme. And our unlikely protagonist rises by a chance and he must travel far to defeat the enemies one by one, gathering power and allies incrementally. Very formulaic, right? So what makes it different?

It is the Nihei touch. It is that artwork, the death and fatalities shown in the most soul-crushing way and the transitions on the scenes with measured jumps. You feel both detached from the harsh reality of that world, at the same time be drowned by the darkness it submerges itself in. Violence of massive proportions get omitted on the next page and you just see the resulting doom and destruction in incredible details. You reach the depth of you imagination to visualize what may have happened. Yet there's a fluidity in the story here. Even if you feel lost or struggle to fill in the gaps, the rhythm feels uninterrupted. Take a deeper look and you may realize there's a master behind the art.

And our author has probably made larger strides in character development, they serve a higher purpose than to just continue the story. You can relate and tax your imagination a bit further with the characters, this is a great catalyst for the reader's appetite. Yet that trademark minimalism hasn't been lost in any way.

So that's what this manga is. It carries forward the celebrated qualities and skills of the artist, at the same time it expresses Nihei's desire to produce a "Tezuka-level mass appeal".

This might end up to be his most polished work till date.

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Its interesting and strange to me that people write reviews for unfinished or ongoing manga, but in the case for Aposimz - even its now "finished" status is actually forever unfinished due to a hasty cancellation. Nihei was forced to attempt to cliff note about 50 chapters worth of story into the last 4 because of that. I won't judge Aposmiz for the hilariously rushed ending, however I didn't find rest of the story or art to hold up regardless of that forced ending.

As per the Nihei Blame usual you have a rather stoic MC with a small gun that has the power to punch a hole through everything, travelling around a mechanical dystopia with a female sidekick (actually 2 this time), some Abara style transformations, and at times the lighthearted goofiness of Sidonia. The biggest change is probably how generic and "not-Nehei" the manga feels; things quickly devolve into shounen battles with tiered enemies, special superpowers, mascot animals, ass pull fights, explanation of said fight/abilities, etc. Technically Nihei always has moments almost like that, but not to the same degree and frequency that Aposmiz has. It is very much a watered down and shounen-y story overall. There are hints of the expert world building of Nihei, but it feels rehashed from his older works, except now straddled by this atmosphere killing shounen battle nonsense (along with some very obvious and clear "influence" from Nausicaa).

That being said nothing here is really new for him, besides his continuation/advancement of the Sidonia artstyle, which is something I personally think just looks rather boring and lifeless in comparison to his older heavy ink stuff. Its lacking in shading at times, being mostly empty white, a single grey tone, and then ink for hair and lines of objects. I appreciate trying a new artstyle; but it feels more simplified in its shading, more boring to look at, like less effort is being put in, and honestly sometimes hard to make out what things are exactly due to that lack of shading. A look at his coloured pages are obviously a huge step down from his previous efforts, not even in a different style, they are simply just flat out worse and look like he barely tried at all. Faces and people are also far more cutesy, utterly gone are the uncanny and strangely spaced faces from his older works which stood out from other artists.

The atmosphere too is very similar to Sidonia because of how much more playful characters are and how lighthearted things look. Silly jokes and even ecchi scenes coming up again and again through the story, but are mostly just generic and played out nonsense. Nothing like the ol naked girl walks into the bathroom and then hurts the MC for looking at her titddies, never seen enough of those epic gags, right guys....? Maybe I am no longer Nihei's target audience with things like this, but I never found these "jokes" very funny even when I was younger, and more importantly is that it's so overdone that I believe it's absolutely worthy of criticism.

Its a shame to say; but with this manga, Sidonia, and the Blame CGI movie - I think I have to say that modern day Nihei is completely washed up. He seems more interested in having cute girls, slapstick humor, shounen battles, and awful romance than creating the gritty, mysterious and dark worlds he was known for. Its fine to change your style, but if your new thing is just trying to make yourself more accessible and generic - then I'm not going to pretend its anything other than bad. I don't like having to say that, but I think its the truth at this point because he threw away his own unique style and then watered himself down to be more "accessible". Essentially he sold out, which was probably clear as day with Sidonia, but I was holding on hoping that maybe it was only a one time thing. That is not the case, and really I expect him to make an even more egregious attempt to commercialize himself in the next story he creates due to the failure of Aposmiz.

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