I, personally, have never read anything quite like this. It’s very creative on the author’s part.

The story begins with a flash of light. In the year 2038, downtown Tokyo experienced a large blast of light that plunged its civilization into complete chaos. Those under the range of the blast suffered complete memory loss apart from speech. Anyone carrying some form of identification was left with a name, but others like small children, were left with nothing. No memories of family, friends, home, nothing. The solution produced by the Japanese government was to create an underground facility for the victims while researching developments toward a cure on the surface. The identified victims could live with other affected family members underground or form a “family” within a group of affected people. Those who lived in the underground community became known as Kid’z and those unaffected by the blast on the surface were known as Adults.

Pretty awesome start right?!

So enters Noa. He lives with two small children which he considers to be his family in the underground facility. Not much is ever certain about his character, personality or background wise. As a Kid’z he is intelligent, quick witted, makes friends easily, and has a profound desire to rebel against authority. There is a whole nother side to his character that you know is there but never really get to see firsthand. You get a small snippet of what he was like before his memory loss but not enough that you can truly understand his characteristics. The characters involved in his life underground shape him to be very compassionate towards the other victims. He loves his brother and sister that he takes care of and enjoys the company of his friends from school. As a reader you don’t get to know much about his friends or even the children his lives with. You see how Noa interacts with them but you aren’t left with much incite on their own personality’s. Shunsuke is the leader among cops in the chase to catch the terrorist that has broken into the underground facility. Another character without much explanation. What drives his passion against Kid’z is his sister who was affected by the blast two years ago in some way. His role within the story that takes place underground is basically to function as Noa’s opposite and rival. [if you’ve ever read Death Note, L and Light relationship]

The transition between the how the government appears to function to the corrupted version is well played out. Lacking some details like the rest of the story and of course could have been done better but I liked the general concept.

The story was fast-pasted, not so much that I was annoyed with it, but enough so that you noticed how much better it could have been if there had been more detail. It is only three volumes and although it produces an interesting story, a lot of uncertainty is left.

Now I don’t really know anything on the subject but I was probably most intrigued about the theory of memory loss. I'll spare you details but I'll just say I'm a college student studying biology. I remember going over memory in Psychology and how it is stored in the brain. From what I understood, the location in the brain where our memories are stored isn’t known for sure and some people believe memory is stored in more than one place in the brain [on that note I was willing to over look that speech was not forgotten in Kid’z]. But how everyone’s memory was lost was never clearly explained. Since they are searching for a cure, I assumed the memories have not been completely erased from the brain but are being suppressed. Why/how? And then if memories could be restored, how do they get “put back” so to speak. It’s one of the main focuses of the story yet it’s left very vague.

I will give the author points for creating a whole underground civilization, explaining details like where they get their water, sun, air, ect.

If this was an anime it probably would have been pulled off better. Since its written, it relies more heavily on material and dialogue to create suspense/interest.

It’s a really good story that just fell short of what it could have been. Still most definitely worth the read though, I’d recommend it.

Story: 9 [story is awesome, how its told is where there are problems]
Art: 9 [great]
Character: 4 [lacks detail plus just not original]
Enjoyment: 8 [very good]
Overall: 8 [very good]