The story of Area 88 is a fascinating one, and the manga is much richer and has much more depth than the (necessarily) truncated version of the story that most people are familiar with in the Anime (either the OVA or T.V. Series).
The premise is quite simple, really. Shin Kazama, an orphan who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become one of the most promising young pilots at Yamato Airlines, and in a serious relationship with the airline president’s beautiful daughter Ryoko Tsugumo, is betrayed by his unscrupulously ambitious friend (and fellow orphan), Satoru Kanzaki. In an attempt to remove Shin as a rival, Kanzaki tricks him into drunkenly signing recruitment papers for the Mercenary Air Force of the Kingdom of Asran. A soldier against his will, Shin has three options: fulfill the three year contract, buyout his contract for $1.5 million, or die in combat.
Clocking in at 23 volumes, the story of Area 88 is a long one. There's as much, if not more, drama that happens outside the cockpit as in. However, given that the official English language release was cut tragically short, many of you may not be a...
The cast of Area 88 is large and colourful, but can sometimes be a bit confusing. It also doesn’t help that there are sometimes significant differences, amalgamations, additions and exclusions, between the original manga series, the OVA anime series, an...
One of the most intriguing things about Area 88 is the juxtaposition of the cartoony characters and the highly detailed and realistic vehicles. Kaoru Shintani seems to have gone out of his way to include (then) cutting edge vehicles, such as the B-1 ...
Originally simply the designation for a Royal Asran Air Force base, along with Area 81, Area 85, etc., for the sake of convenience, it began to become a blanket term referring to the foreign mercenary units stationed there. From the middle part of the ...
