TEAM PHOENIX GN VOL 01 (OF 5) brings #OsamuTezuka's iconic characters together in a dynamic and detailed space opera.
The story follows Sapphire, Princess Knight of Silverland, as she leads a band of space pirates to combat the Robot Alliance's tyranny in the universe. The plot maintains a good pace, and character development delves into intriguing conflicts between organics and synthetics.
It's a promising start, and I'm eager to see which other recognizable characters will join the adventure in future volumes.

Thank you NetGalley, for providing me with this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Sapphire is a human princess but publicly she’s Sapphire the knight, prince and heir to Silverland’s throne.

She stands up for people who are being treated unfairly by robots.

A century before Sapphire’s birth, the biologicks (the organic organisms of the universe) waged war against the robot alliance. The biologicks suffered countless defeats. Ultimately the sentient robots and their robot alliance came to dominate 90 percent of the universe.

But some sought to defend humanity, their creators.

When the robots allow some humans to become knights of the robot alliance, Sapphire becomes one of them. But one day, she has to fight against her father and she should kill him as he is a traitorous monarch but she just can’t. It is her father who persuades her that it’s best to kill him and she eventually does but at what cost..

2 years later, she has become a space pirate captain!! She has a loyal crew I loved and I have to admit that I wasn’t really warming up to this manga until they met a mysterious and amazing character called Fire and they entered the underground safe haven. From that moment on, I really fell in love with this manga and it became a beautiful, interesting and exciting read with an incredible ending!! I need the sequel now!

Although I'm not a Tezuka purist (I read Pluto before Astro Boy), I was definitely apprehensive about how such a radical reimagining and combination of classic Tezuka characters would be pulled off; it seems like a tricky feat, to say the least. However, by the end of volume 1, I was totally engrossed in the story; I enjoyed seeing characters both familiar and less familiar, but the story was unique enough that the differences from the original didn't seem so jarring. Although having the robots as antagonists was a little strange to me (especially after Pluto), once I got into the story, I was able to enjoy the references without looking too closely for connection. I've mentioned Pluto a lot, probably because I think Urasawa is a genius, but I think it's a great example of how a new work can be inspired by something classic, but still take it in a new direction and make something really fantastic in its own right. I get the feeling that's the goal for Team Phoenix as well, and while it's too early to say whether they've fully succeeded from just one volume, it's certainly promising enough that I already want to read more.