7 Billion Needles

A manga about a solitary high school girl who ends up being vaporized by a meteor that is an alien entity. The alien resurrects her while sharing her body and tasks her to help it hunt down another alien. Loosely based on Hal Clement‘s science fiction story Needle.

We’ve discussed this on a previous episode.

By all accounts 7 Billion Needles is a fine science fiction series with body horror elements. My issue with this manga mostly lies in the fact that I read Parasyte before reading this. Every aspect from the art to the story in this book pales to Parasyte and their similarities make it hard not to compare them. Nobuaki Tadano is completely competent as a manga artist but it’s just hard to recommend this when you can go read Parasyte instead.

Available in English from Kodansha.

~dakazu