Asuna is a clumsy spacenoid, from Zeon, attending Ecole du Ciel, a Federation mobile suit academy. She’s a pretty normal girl. She has some friends, worries about her small breast size (don’t worry about those, Asuna, they’re cute as is!) and a crush. Pretty normal, except for one key difference, her father is the infamous Professor Elmarit of the Zeon Defense Academy. During the One Year War, her father made Asuna use many mobile suit simulators to train her (for something that we don’t know, although it is probably newtype related.)

This story takes place between Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 Stardust Memory and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, before the incidents where the Titans gas a protesting colony, but

Asuna Elmarit, the pretty heroine of our story. Not that much of a pilot (yet,) but she’s a cutie.

after they are formed. The story starts out with Asuna in a mobile suit simulator battling Elisia. She loses in little over two minutes. It turns out that unlike many other Gundam series, Asuna isn’t really good at piloting mobile suits. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’s the worse in the school. She, in fact, doesn’t really care about being a mobile suit pilot. She’d rather be put in logistical support. When she realizes that she can’t move forward without being able to pilot an MS successfully in the simulator, she and her best friend Emilu decide to start a training regime. The regime turns out to be quite ineffective, though, and Shinn (Asuna’s crush) decides to help them out and makes a better regime.

Ironically, it’s Shinn that Asuna has to fight in the simulator in order to show her Instructor Yahagi the results of her training to and to advance to in the MS training program. Asuna chooses to pilot an MS-06J Zaku II (which her teacher does not like) while Shinn chooses an RGM-79C. Asuna eventually wins by using some rather odd maneuvers (one of which includes kicking the GM while the Zaku II was on the ground) and is able to advance in the program.

As the story progresses, Asuna is put in more and more dangerous situations.

Mikimoto clearly put a lot of effort when it comes to art in Ecole du Ciel. The characters and their surroundings are very detailed and all of the character designs are top-notch.

The manga focuses more on Asuna’s life and the changes she goes through during the story and her and her family’s history and the conspiracy that the school’s council is involved in regarding newtypes. The manga devotes a lot of time towards the development of other characters like Emil, Elisia, and Yahagi. Some may say the story is a little slow, but that is so the characters are given enough time to develop and so the reader has an idea of the motivations that some of the characters have during the manga.

The art and story of the manga is done by the famous Haruhiko Mikimoto, character designer for the equally famous Macross series. All of the character designs have a sort of Macross feel to them, which isn’t really a bad thing. Almost all of the designs are “attractive” (as in, visually appealing.) The art is very detailed and the mobile suits look amazing. It’s quite a shame Tokyopop decided to grayscale the color pages that were in the original Japanese release of the graphic novel. The pictures in the Illutration Gallery in the beginning of the book are still beautiful, even if they aren’t colored like they are supposed to be.

I’d recommend any fan of Gundam (or mech series in general) to give this series a try, although I’ve only had the chance to read up to volume 2 of the series.