Manga: The Isolator

The Isolator 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Mysterious objects from space have landed, embedding themselves within human beings around the world and granting them impossible powers according to their deepest wishes. Seventeen-year-old Utsugi Minoru's only wish is to be able to live apart from the world and events around him. But will he remain the same after experiencing his new powers--and new dangers? 

I'm going to admit that I had no idea Reki Kawahara was doing another series until this popped up! I've completely missed the light novels! So I was super excited to get to review the manga. Especially as everyone and their dog are going to see Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale and you know...it's not out here until April. April. Not that I have anyone to go with to see it because no-one else likes it *cries* 

Side note: who else is intrigued by the whole "SAO will return" thing that's been reported at the end of the movie? Season 3 oorrr....an adaption of Progressive!? Interested in your thoughts guys! 

So anyway, with SAO withdrawal, I eagerly dived in to this. In The Isolator, three months ago mysterious 'third eyes' came to Earth and attached/embedded themselves in to select people. Some where red, aka 'Rubies' and some where black, aka 'Jets'. Thus we have our good guys in the Jets and the bad guys in the Rubies. From this first volume we get to know Minoru Utsugi, who has a tragic past and is a Jet. We meet him, get to know his situation, meet his would be friend, get the lie of the land. There's plenty of intrigue scattered throughout and then we meet the organisation of Jets trying to protect innocent people from the Rubies. And then that's it...and I don't know about you guys, but I was left wanting more! 

I have to say, as someone who's read the SAO manga....the art in this is so much better, sorry! It was actually pretty gorgeous and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it. I'm one of the few people who watched the anime and then went to the manga and light novels, and I found the art in SAO to be jarring to say the least. So I was happy to see some brilliant art work for this new series! 

I was intrigued from the start, what happened to Utsugi? What's his power? And then who was the weird dude with the teeth? I kept wanting to know more, and I thought it was interesting to see the villain being the one to tell us about Utsugi's powers properly! I thought the pacing was well done, the premise is interesting and has a lot of potential for future volumes. The characters we've met so far are intriguing, I suspect there's a lot more to what happened to Utsugi's family and I'm waiting to see what! I'm intrigued to know more about Yumiko too! 

By the end of the volume, I was pretty much fully invested, and eager to learn more. For the first volume in a new series, I think it's off to a brilliant start! It'll draw you in, catch your interest, and you'll be lost to the story! I'm very excited to see how this is going to progress and develop over the next few volumes! Dare I say it may be better than SAO? 

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