The bottom floor of the Sci Fi Valley Con is full of several independent artists hoping to sell and gain awareness of their own individual stories. One in particular gained my interest, a guy named Steiner Palomino (who Paige and I still think looks like our very own Lan Moore), selling his own series named New Era G. It's an anime/manga-ish story about this kid who got his life turned upside down after he got into one little fight with people being up to no good in his neighborhood. And no, his auntie didn't make him move to Bel-Air but after all the crazy adventures that await him, he'll probably wish he had. Let's check it out.
Before we go any further, this blog article will be spoilerish, but I will still try to be as brief as I can. If you're interested, be sure to go to New Era G to find out how to buy your own copy.
The story opens with the main character, Ryo O'Connor, lying on the floor and staring at a huge hole in the ceiling of his house, as his brother panics. He says they're doomed. We then flashback to how the day ended up like this.
13 hours earlier, Ryo is being woken up by his younger brother, Brainy, that wants him to take him swimming. Along the way, they drive past an arcade with the latest arcade game, and Ryo can't resist but check it out. There he challenges a girl to a fighting game. When the game match has one round left to determine the victor, he remembers his brother is still in the car waiting, and ducks out to join him. The girl follows suit and asks if she join them to the pool. Her name is Julie Amasatei.
As the trio have fun at the swimming center, something blows up a propane tank which causes everyone to evacuate. It's a shadowed figure that calls out for Ryo. The purple clad man calls himself Erasa, but Ryo thinks he's a random cosplayer and doesn't take him seriously. The laughs stop when Erasa kicks the crap of Ryo and declares he's looking for the O'Connor armor.
Erasa explains that years ago Ryo and Brainy's father and he discovered a powerful armor inside a meteorite. The armor seemed to be too powerful for anyone to wear, so after trying it for a while, Mr. O'Connor thinks it would be safe to keep it locked up, and perhaps give it to his son someday. Erasa grew jealous that he never got to try it and went off to train in martial arts and become a cyborg. Once he returned to seek out the armor, he discovered Mr. O'Connor is dead, but he had sons... which brings him here.
Erasa fires an eye beam that was headed for Julie, but she was able to lean backwards far enough to dodge it. She decides to take over and slips on a martial arts outfit she had in her bag, and wear some bracelets that magically stretch into full-length armbands. Erasa tell the brothers to run while she handles things and Erasa determines she's stronger than the average human.
Erasa and Julie fight it out each displaying amazing speed and strength beyond normal human levels. Ryo feels bad that he is unable to help, despite having trained in martial arts for two years and decides to head back. As the fight rages on, Julie manages to destroy one of Erasa's arms. Erasa is done playing around and announces a new technique that noone has ever survived.
Erasa fires off a laser beam, but it seems like several are coming at Julie from all directions. As she jumps to dodge the blasts, she get smashed in the back by Erasa, that somehow fixed his broken arm. She's confused as Erasa seems smaller and she can't sense his energy anymore. She soon discovers she's fighting 5 other Erasas as the real one appears behind her and slashes her across the back. Julie falls.
Inspired by the words of her sensei, Julie is able to give it one more and cause severe damage to Erasa. However the other Erasa, AKA The Little Men manage to pin her down, so Erasa can finish her with his sword. Erasa demands Ryo to turn over the armor, or he'll kill Julie. Confused and enraged, Ryo suddenly is engulfed in flames and full of newfound power. He flies into Erasa and sends him flying with a powerful punch.
Julie thanks him but it angry that he didn't tell him about his fire powers, which of course he didn't know about until recently. Erasa calls for terminal protocol and the heroes are surrounded by 40 Erasabots. One of the Little Men points out that Erasa's face is melting due to the attack from earlier and decides to escape, leaving # 1 in charge. Seriously outnumbered, Julie says her goodbyes and decides to use her suicide technique, the Kujo Firudo, and tells Ryo to leave.
Julie powers up and shoves Ryo into the pool (since he didn't want to leave). She let loose a huge energy explosion that destroys all the robots. Ryo finds Julie laying face down and even she's surprised that she survived.
Erasa flies across the desert, enraged that all his Little Men were destroyed. He returns to his invisible fortress and gets his arm repaired. Erasa faces a woman named Tamara and tells her he needs his face fixed.
Back at Ryo's house, he shows his fire powers to his little brother. Suddenly an astral projection of their father appears, wearing the armor. He explains more about the armor and says that Erasa used to just be a lab assistant robot with A.I named Era. Rather than being a cyborg he's actually all robot. While trying to hide the armor from falling into the wrong hands, Ryo's dad ended up being trapped in sub-space for what in our time would be ten years. Ryo asks why he can burst into flames, and his father explains that the same meteorite that had the armor also had Ryo as a baby. Not only is he not his real son, he's also an alien.
As Ryo deals with this truth, Julie wants to see his room. There she shows him the scars across her back from when Erasa attacked her, and Ryo rubs ointment on her to heal her. Suddenly there's a noise and Ryo runs out to see a huge hole in the ceiling as a sword just randomly fell and crashed through it. He falls on his back and says they're doomed.
My Opinions
This was an interesting story and it left me curious as to where the story goes from here. I really hate to say this because I'm not that much better... but the art is a bit rough and the characters are off model a lot. However, Mr. Palomino does excellent background and angles. The overhead shots of the pool area in full detail are awesome and leave me wondering if I could ever draw something that precise. The characters themselves are pretty cool looking, my favorites being the designs for Julie and Erasa. The action scenes are good and fast-paced and Julie and Erasa display cool martial arts skills and special techniques. The whole battle against Erasa is full of anime flair and takes a few chapters before he finally escapes, and just think, this is only the first fight with him, and I'm sure more powerful foes await. Palomino has the anime fight style down.
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| The attention to detail and pool effects is just awesome. I'm very impressed with this. |
One character I didn't mention in the summary is this strange alien blob that Brainy keep called Ragno. He wasn't in this a lot... but I'm curious as to where he come from, and why stuff like Erasa and Julie's powers surprise them so much if they already have a talking alien blob. Let's not forget those wild and crazy Little Men, especially #1, the silliest of the lot.
I don't really have any nitpicks for this story, except maybe the fact that Ryo is an alien didn't seem to affect Julie and Brainy too much. Especially Brainy since you know.... the brother you know all your life really wasn't your brother at all... and is an alien... Even when Julie drags Ryo off to his bedroom, Brainy thinks 'my brother gets all the luck' even though... you know.. you just found out he's really not your brother.
I do have to say Mr. Palomino, I do commend your efforts on a job well done. So far there are 2 volumes out, and I'll try to get the second one. You can bet when he's not busy at cons he's probably working hard on volume 3. And at the con he managed to show me a cool looking anti-hero character which will be shown later on in the series. Again, I summed up the most I could and didn't go as deep into detail as I do in my regular summaries. You'll just have to buy the book to see for yourself.
Mr. Palomino, you, and many others like you are an inspiration to go out there and start your own series. I hope to someday get my own stuff off the ground.
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