Terraformars volume 15 - Yu Sasuga and Kenchi Tachibana

 Time for one of the manga I enjoy immensely, and that is also the reason this jumped forward a lot in the pile of manga still to read.

Because I loved the anime (and Michelle of course), and the books add that extra layer to the story, as well as more story to the series.

All now forced to work together at last, the survivors fight to get to the extraction point.  On Earth, agents are hunting the terraformars that made it back to our planet.

But not all the groups fare well, with Keiji being severly injured facing a terraformar with the same base, the peacock mantis shrimp.  He removes the armguards he is equipped with to be able to use his natural speed and boxing skills better, beating the big beast.

Ivan remembers exactly why he fights, and boosts Marcos as well.  As they run, the rescue ship, the Frontier Spirit, is set to arrive in 9 minutes to drop escape pods.  But a terraformar that fights out of it's own free will and not some instinct blocks their way, and some of the survivors still fall to it.  Only about 20 of the crew of 100 remain from the Annex 1, with the beast in front of them seemingly having hatched onboard the vessel and having access to some gear from the now derelict vessel.

On the other side, Akari and Michelle are forced into one of the escape pods with Eva, as the four remaining division commanders stay behind to face the hordes of beasts closing in on them.  Keiji and Marcos still face the Annex born one, when bombs of the same kind as the day they arrived detonate around them.  They realise the roaches are actually coralling them in, and have been doing this from the moment the expedition arrived on Mars.  But Keiji and his group survive the bombardment, suprising the Annex 1 born leader.  They overcome it, but Kanako gets grieveously injured in the process.

On Earth, the leaders of Japan and the United States have found an ally to send a rescue ship, as those efforts had been blocked by China.  From the Deza Republic, which lies between Germany, Russia and the Roman Federation, they found the possibility to send one as the country isn't part of U-Nasa and it's politics.  So this resulted in Japan covertly building the ship, as the Annex survivors are suprised they are being saved by a private enterprise vessel...

And so this action packed volume comes to a close, with the rescue of the survivors now really close.  How will this pan out, and can the division commanders be saved?

That will be something for next volume!