After the success of Sky High Survival, Tsuina Miura and Takahiro Oba return with Sky High Survival – Next Level, a sequel without downtime!
The story
Senya Matsuda is a rather ordinary schoolboy, who nevertheless finds it difficult to give up his childhood dreams. He strives day after day to face reality much less tasty than his imagination, with a certain resignation. But this rather quiet life changes the day Senya, meditating alone on the roof of his school, finds himself facing a huge column straight out of a science fiction story! Stunned, the young boy is suddenly propelled into an urban world in ruins. And when a teenage girl commits suicide in front of him, pursued by a masked man armed with a sharp blade, Senya understands that to survive in this strange world, he will have to find allies and fight with all his might!
A sequel that takes its marks
Sky High Survival – Next Level takes up the codes of the mother series Sky High Survival, completed at Kana in 21 volumes: an urban world in ruins, with a very graphic rendering, in which takes place a manhunt between two clans, the masked "monsters" and the "survivors", all under the aegis of a powerful and relentless woman, who would hide at the top of the futuristic tower seen by Senya… However, despite quite marked references, no need to know by heart the first version to appreciate the reading of this volume. Indeed, we find ourselves immersed in the action from the first pages! The dynamic line is pleasant, despite a very conventional and sometimes a little frozen character design. Senya's character in itself is quite intriguing. Thus, his worry and the uncertainty he feels when he arrives in this new world are quickly replaced by an apparent acceptance. Which acceptance fluctuates in a few boxes to become a total despair, to the point that the young boy almost ends his life. If the goal of the masked men and women is indeed to push the "survivors" to despair, Senya's attitude is sometimes disconcerting and makes his character difficult to apprehend. As said before, the action is set up very quickly, maybe even a little too quickly… which, in a way, puts the reader in the same position as Senya, forced to constantly adapt to this absurd world where strangers seek to kill him! This is perhaps the key to allow identification with the characters and, therefore, an even more gripping dive into the story. Despite a somewhat messy rendering, the revelations at the end of the volume are interesting, and the gain in power that Senya obtains thanks to his weapon and his strange "inhabitant" make you want to read more!
A conventional survival game
If SHS – Next Level does not necessarily shine by its graphic or scripted originality, it is in line with survival games and respects all the codes. It can indeed be difficult to stand out after the success of works like Doubt, Judge (Yoshiki Tonogai), King's Game and its derivatives (Hitori Renda and Nobuaki Kanazawa), or Darwin's Game (FlipFlops) and the recent Dice (Yun Hyun Seok). Whether set in the real world and behind closed doors, or in a fully open isekai, survival games feature ordinary heroes who are faced with drastic choices to survive. Alliances are made and unmade, the dead (often bloody!) follow one another, all often headed by an unknown entity. This brings interesting plots to draw, and the twists and turns make the narrative breathless and addictive. Sky High Survival – Next Level lays the groundwork in this first volume for a race against time with good potential. Despite the impression of a somewhat quick introduction, which can be destabilizing, because the "rules" and ambitions of the characters do not really take shape until the very end, the story is catchy and the many twists leave no dead time, neither to the characters nor to the readers! Let's bet that in the following volumes, the first will gain in thickness and stability, and that the link with the mother series will not just be a bait but will become a scripted asset! In conclusion, Sky High Survival – Next Level, if it does not reinvent the genre, remains a manga that fans of survival games will appreciate for its dynamism and effective cutting. Despite a certain lack of thickness in this first volume, the sequel could prove interesting, by providing information and a more in-depth analysis of the characters and the world in which they evolve. Series in progress, available at Kana. Volume 2 scheduled for May 14, 2021. To read an excerpt, it's here!
