Review: Awaken
Like the legendary Flat Earth, this disc of land is encased in a force field. The Inner Sanctum is the high-tech heart of the self-contained world and home of the elite. The Outer Ring contains the majority of the population, who live a more conventional existence.
In such a limited environment rules and regulations are paramount, but four young students find themselves at odds with the strict and oppressive regime under which they live. Zesh is intellectually gifted but distracted. His fiends Son, Michael and Kit see the inequality and injustice around them and suffer helpless anger.
"There has to be a better way."
Then Zesh starts to have some very bizarre hallucinations, leading him to explore new possibilities and setting him on the path to a whole new destiny...
Awaken by writer Oliver Brown and artist Chris Ber from Melbourne is a cosmic sci-fi/fantasy/young adult fusion set in a fascinating semi-futuristic world in which the familiar and the fantastic coexist. Zesh and his friends look like regular school kids in their Outer Ring suburb, which is like a slice of the world we know transplanted into outer space. The characters inhabit a contemporary-looking city with roads, buildings and trees; above them glowing pink neon rings of the environmental force field and, beyond that, the gulf of space. Like Moonbase Alpha in Space 1999, this little island of life floats helplessly out into the unknown.
Ber's art is a fine balance of manga exuberance with sharp design and detail. Awaken has elements of both Eastern and Western influence, which sits well with its far future setting. The at times comedic expressions contrast well with the more serious themes. Humanity destroyed the Earth... what else are we capable of?
Their world is headed into uncharted territory, and, in more ways than one, these four teenagers are about to step outside of the boundaries of the lives they know and into a universe of terrifying, exciting adventures.
Zak Webber
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