Fireball (manga)
Encyclopedia
Fireball is an unfinished science fiction manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 by Katsuhiro Otomo
Katsuhiro Otomo
is a Japanese comic book creator, screenwriter and film director. He is best known as the creator of the manga Akira and its animated film adaptation. Otomo has also directed several live-action films, such as the 2006 feature film adaptation of the manga Mushishi.-Biography:Katsuhiro Otomo was...

, created for Action Deluxe magazine and published in 1979. It is notable for establishing ground Otomo would later explore successfully in Domu and his best-known work Akira
Akira (manga)
is a manga series by Katsuhiro Otomo. Set in a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, the work uses conventions of the cyberpunk genre to detail a saga of turmoil. Initially serialized in the pages of Young Magazine from 1982 until 1990, the work was collected in six volumes by Japanese publisher Kodansha...

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Plot

The governance of a futuristic city is secretly handled by a supercomputer called ATOM, and publicly by a ruthless female director whom ATOM refers to as "Mama". A group of freedom fighters attempt to expose and sabotage the system.

One of the freedom fighters has an elder brother, with whom he has lost contact, who works for the director's riot police. This elder brother possesses moderate psychic abilities such as the power to briefly levitate a pen. The director learns of this and recruits the nascent psychic for an 'experiment' which entails connecting his brain and nervous system to ATOM, stripping away much of his body in the process. Throughout this the subject is seen to inhabit a blissful womblike existence from his perspective.

The freedom fighter brother attempts to infiltrate the government base but is shot by security. Sensing this, the psychic brother wakes from anesthetic and uses his powers to superheat his surroundings and levitate the remnants of his physical body from the workbench, effectively becoming the center of a vengeful destructive sun: the 'Fireball' of the story's title.

Unfinished status

Otomo claimed to grow weary of the story "after about page 20" and conceived the plot of Domu as a potentially stronger work retaining the theme of psychic superpowers. He later expanded the psychic element and that of freedom fighters in his epic Akira
Akira (manga)
is a manga series by Katsuhiro Otomo. Set in a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, the work uses conventions of the cyberpunk genre to detail a saga of turmoil. Initially serialized in the pages of Young Magazine from 1982 until 1990, the work was collected in six volumes by Japanese publisher Kodansha...

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English reprints

  • Otomo, K. (1994) Memories - The Collection, London - Mandarin Press. ISBN 0-7493-9687-3
  • Otomo, K. (1995) Memories, Random House Australia. ISBN 9780749396879
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