Print Review: Apollo's Song

Review Apollo’s SongWritten by WarpshadowRating very good

Hope is often at it’s most powerful when it is shown side by side with despair. That makes the small hope in this manga very powerful.

Shogo Chikashi is an antisocial young man who has been taken into psychiatric care because of his cruelty to animals. When asked about the cause of his condition he says that he has an aversion to romantic love of all kinds. This attitude towards love causes Shogo to be cursed by a goddess to fall in love with one woman but be torn away from her each of his lives until the end of time. This is the story of Shogo and his curse told throughout the ages.

Apollo’s song is an ode to romantic love and how it endures even through the hardest of trials. This is a manga by Osamu Tezuka and from by experience he is never one to pull punches with his stories so the only real happy ending to this story is that even if the human race is knocked down a hundred times for the sake of love it will rise that hundred and first time. The structure of the story is a bit odd as even though the story could be read as a collection of five different stories but they all weave together in a strange fashion as in particular chapter two could be looked at as either hypnosis or a past life. Overall I found this to be an interesting and uplifting (even though the subject matter is quite dark) story that hardcore manga fans should enjoy.