A number of pieces of anime have originally come from manga. In this day of re-makes and continuations of existing stories we are seeing some older manga pulled from the archives and then animated. BIRDY THE MIGHTY is one such story. It is one of Yuuki Masami's earlier works published about 11 years ago. He is probably better known for his work on PATLABOR, which has been animated as well. The BIRDY manga and the OVA retain a number of similiar elements, but they also diverge greatly on at least one critical story element that is in the OVA series but not in the manga at all.
The manga starts similar to the OVA. A suspicious-looking person in a trenchcoat is being followed by a girl in a somewhat curious outfit. We learn on the second page of the story that Birdy is with the space police and that she is trying to track down Crystal Rebi. The person she is currently chasing, Geegaa, is her current lead to Rebi's whereabouts. At this time Senkawa Tsutomu is wandering home from a study session, repeating over and over the material he needs to learn. Geegaa comes upon Tsutomu and finds a use for the boy. Hiding around a corner when Birdy comes upon them, Geegaa throws Tsutomu to Birdy. Birdy, thinking that she is being attacked by Geegaa, gives Tsutomu a lethal shock.
Back at her shuttle Birdy receives a bawling out from her chief over what she did to Tsutomu. She is forced to merge with Tsutomu in order to save his life. Tsutomu, unaware of this, has a strange series of dreams. It starts with waking up in class and his teacher berating him over hiding a sukebe-magazine in his desk. It then immediately switches to his sister teasing him about the same magazine. The dream then switches to his parents, holding the same sukebe-magazine, expressing regret. Suddenly, all of the people in his dream appear at once and then turn into an image of Birdy's chief (who basically looks like a giant insect), all saying that he failed his exam.
Waking up suddenly in his bed, Tsutomu wonders about the strange dream. He quickly checks to make sure the sukebe-magazine we saw in his dream is safely in his desk drawer at home (and not in his desk at school.) Tsutomu is surprised by his sister, who is wondering what is making him shout so loudly in the morning. Tsutomu quickly hides the magazine from her. As he is packing for school he notices that one of his study books is missing. Quickly determining that no one in the house has it, he recalls running into Geegaa last night when he was holding the book and believes that he must have dropped it in the confusion. Tsutomu is quickly out of the house to find his lost book.
Near where the action happened last night, we see Geegaa and his comrade Gomesu talking. Geegaa is telling Gomesu that the space police are on to them and that here is where he ran in to one of their operatives (Birdy.) Gomesu seems rather unfazed. Geegaa suddenly sees Tsutomu. Surprised that he is alive, Geegaa leaves Gomesu, telling him that he is going to question the kid. Geega surprises Tsutomu and quickly drags him in to an isolated alley (this time faster and further than any human could). Geegaa, however, is surprised by Tsutomu, or rather Birdy, as she takes control of Tsutomu's body and quickly overcomes Geegaa. After she sends Geegaa off, she lets Tsutomu take control back of his body. Tsutomu is in shock, having been aware during the whole thing. Birdy tells him, inside his mind, that she will explain later. She reminds him that he better get on to school. At school everyone wonders at the torn up state of his clothing and all Tsutomu can do is violently shake his head and disavow any knowledge of what happened.
The next chapter starts with Tsutomu dreaming again. However in this dream he is remembering what he was told by Birdy and her chief about his current situation. In his dream he ends up running away from the chief, only to run into Birdy, who smiles evilly at him. She gives him a jolt, causing him to wake up and land on the floor. In his mind he hears Birdy suppressing a chuckle and he angrily tells her not to laugh. Tsutomu is now aware of his situation and is apparently not one bit happy about it. His mood extends to school, where several girls notice that he has had the same gloomy expression for a while now. One of his classmates, Natsumi Hiyamiya, replies that she likes this kind of face. Her friends are taken aback by her statement. She goes over to Tsutomu and asks what is wrong (assuming that he is having problems studying.) He blurts out that there is an alien inside of his body. Hiyamiya thinks that he has some sort of fever or the stress has finally gotten to him. At this moment two of his other classmates butt in, saying they have the perfect cure for Tsutomu. One of them pulls out more sukebe-magazines. Hiyamiya pulls them away from Tsutomu, getting angry at them for distracting Tsutomu even more. At this moment, Birdy chimes in inside of Tsutomu's head, wondering what those magazines were. Tsutomu replies quietly to her that they were nothing. Birdy continues on; wasn't there a magazine like that in Tsutomu's room? Tsutomu shouts out loud to be quiet. Everyone in the class suddenly stares at him. Hiyamiya becomes angry at Tsutomu now, because she thought he was telling her to be quiet when she was being worried about him. In a huff, she sends the three boys out of the room saying that she needs them out so the rest of the classmates can finish cleaning the room.
On the way home, Birdy asks Tsutomu what is wrong. It is almost as if he was angry or something. Tsutomu replies that he is angry. During this conversation they pass Gomesu, who is probably surprised that Tsutomu is still around... especially since Geegaa was last seen chasing Tsutomu down. Back at the school, Hiyamiya asks Maskubou and Hazawa (the two boys with the sukebe-magazines) where Tsutomu went. They say that he went off home. One continues that it is probably futile for Tsutomu to study, the other offers that that is when Tsutomu should read these magazines...
The story continues with considerably more interaction between Birdy and Tsutomu as she slowly gains his help in attempting to track down Crystal Rebi. One of the bigger draws in the manga is how it goes more into the various relationships between the characters. The primary element of the storyline does not seem to be stopping some evil plot by aliens and evil human scientists. It seems to be just how Tsutomu has to deal with Birdy and the situations that arise from his condition. In the anime, there was this plot funded by Crystal Rebi where an evil scientist was attempting to harness the psi-power of humans. In the manga this plot is totally absent. This leaves the manga with a more meandering feel. We sort of wander from story to story with no real end in sight. This ends up separating the manga from the anime in very significant ways. If you are looking for the high-paced action of the anime, you will find elements of it here, but it is not as emphasized. If you are more interested in the interactions between Tsutomu, Birdy and Hiyamiya that were left out of the anime, you will be quite entertained at what you find in the manga.
The drawing style is recognizably that of Yuuki Masami although you can see that it is a lot earlier in his career. The line he uses is much heavier and rougher than his current work. The backgrounds are in general fairly simple. The amount of emotion that he can put into the expressions of his characters is still amazing, though. It remains a very effective yet subtle communicator for telling the reader what the character is thinking or feeling. This is probably the strongest element of Yuuki Masami's style. It is what keeps me coming back to his stories no matter if they involve aliens on Earth, mecha in the near future, or a love story trying to take place on a farm where they raise racing horses.
The single most frustrating element is probably that the manga is unfinished. It stops at a point that is sort of circuitous. It seems like Yuuki Masami found other things to work on and that Birdy's run in the manga was about over for one reason or another. To add to this frustration, this compilation is called "Volume 1." Why even say that if that is all there is? Maybe we could dream of the day when more of this manga will be created.

BIRDY THE MIGHTY (TETSUWAN BIRDY) Copyright © Yuuki Masami 1996/Shonen Sunday Books ISBN: 4-09-124821-7 C9979 ¥1200