An interesting start to a series which seems to mix elements of Akira and Big Hero 6. Will most likely give volume 2 a chance before making further judgements on the series.

Thank you to NetGAlley and to Viz for providing a free review copy.

Of course I loved this. The found family trope is my favorite.
This was too good. I loved the art style and the amazing backgrounds. The story was so well written, engaging, and unique. This was very different from what I have read in awhile. I can't wait to read more about the main character's journeys!

What a strong start for this manga series! The story hooked me right away, although not the most odd and original premise ever, it lends itself well to quick exposition and getting the reader right into the story. This first volume managed to capture a range of emotions, from sadness to laughter and whatever emotion it is that boils up when you see two manga robots duking it out. Recommend for any sci fi manga fans, but it's a pretty easy read to hand to anyone looking for a new adventure and they don't mind the post apocalyptic setting.

5/5 Excited to see where it goes!

This was a good read with some interesting world building. The characters were alright, though I wasn't attached to any of them by the end of this volume. The story is intriguing enough to continue, as I am curious to see where the plot goes.

This digital ARC was obtainable via NetGalley for an honest review!

I really liked "Heart Gear, Vol. 1"! So, sad what happened to Zett but when Chrome evolved...*insert heart eyes*. The concept of this manga is interesting and entertaining. Would love to see this as an anime adaptation.

Thanks so much NetGalley and Viz Media for this delightful arc!

5/5 stars

I loved this! The post apocalyptic ai takes over the world trope is definitely around a lot, but I really love what's been done with this series! Each character is unique and quirky, giving it the fun manga/anime vibes even though basically all humans are dead and things look a bit bleak. This was very entertaining and I can't wait to see where the rest of the series goes!

This series deserves all of the hype that it is getting. It is a post-apocalyptic nightmare where Roue may be the only human left, so her new android companion must protect her by any means. This book is just so intriguing, and I cannot wait to see where it goes!

This is not my usual genre of manga. I do like to read dystopian/after the apocalypse books, but they can go south on me pretty quickly. So I was hesitant to read this. The cover is what sold me (it looks romantic and I do like a love story), but when I started to read, it's obvious that she's an 11 year old human (the only one on the planet possibly) and he is an android. Soooo...bait and switch?

But the characters and the storyline completely did not disappoint. The little girl is being raised by her "uncle", who is a "Gear" (aka robot) left over after WWIII destroyed humanity. He finds her one day as a baby and decides to raise her (he was a teacher in his programming, so he was positive towards mini-humans). She grows and learns and thrives, but they need to be careful because robots who have degraded are very dangerous, they just want to destroy anything that moves. It's the law of the jungle when one encounters them, kill or be killed. There is no reasoning with them.

Stuff happens, she makes a new friend, her Uncle is "killed", but she and her new friend are going on a quest to try to find the parts needed to fix him. Adventures, and cliffhanger, ensue.

I am fully invested. I want the little girl Roue to find the part she needs to bring her Uncle back and I HOPE she finds other humans, though something tells me the robots are probably more human then any humans left. Why else would she have been shot off, Superman as a baby like, as a baby herself unless it was to save her from something?

So I am really looking forward to the next volume and hopefully some more answers!

4, this is a great start to a series and I highly recommend it if you are looking for something a little different, stars!

My thanks to NetGalley and VIZ Media LLC for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

I found this to be an interesting manga but I also think i will need some more clarity in the next volume on where the world is heading.

This was a really great first volume for this series. We start off following Roue and her robot uncle Zett. When something tragic happens, Roue finds a new ally in the robot Chrome who is willing to help her figure out what happened to Zett and restore him.

This was a really great introduction to this series. I feel like I learned enough to know what's going on, but there's still plenty of secrets to learn as the story progresses. I also really liked the artwork. Usually, fights are hard for me to follow in manga, but I was really surprised at how easy this volume was to follow.

A fun manga with some great world building. Roue is a sweet character and Chrome is a fierce protector. Really looking forward to the next installment.

What a unique and interesting storyline! The art style was something many manga readers would be comfortable with but with a more sketch-like nature. The character designs were interesting especially for all the different Gears (aka robots). The story takes place in the future, many years following WW3, and while the first volume doesn’t explain in detail about what happened and how the main characters even exist, I will be continuing the series just for that curiosity alone.

Heart Gear Volume One is a story set in a postapocalyptic world that takes place 200 years after the destruction of humanity in World War III.

Heart Gear Volume One
Written by: Tsuyoshi Takaki
Publisher: Shueisha Inc.
English Publisher: VIZ Media
Release Date: August 15, 2023

The volume opens by introducing us to a Gear (a robot) named Zett, who is raising a human girl named Roue. It’s revealed during this volume that Roue is the only known living human being in the world, and that there’s a mystery as to where she came from.

Roue comes across an old building and decides to explore it. In the process, she accidentally activates a prototype Gear named Chrome, who doesn’t have a base program. As it’s explained, the base program essentially serves as the “soul” for a Gear. Zett invites Chrome to stay with them, and Zett serves as a kind of mentor to Chrome. Zett decides against installing a base program into Chrome, and instead encourages the Gear to choose his own purpose.

One day, an insane Gear attacks their home and destroys Zett. It’s during this encounter that Chrome decides what his purpose is: protect Roue. After the battle is over, Chrome takes out Zett’s core unit, and he and Roue decide that they want to find a way to bring him back. The trick is that they need to find a body with an exchangeable core and someone who can help them install Zett’s core unit into the new body.

At this point in the volume, Roue and Chrome set out on a journey. They go to visit Professor Isaac and Mary, two Gears that Roue knows and has grown up around. Isaac is a professor who was friends with Zett, and Mary serves as his maid. Mary is very protective of Roue and doesn’t trust Chrome, leading to the two of them facing off against each other. This battle gives the reader a little more insight into Gears and how they can adapt themselves. Roue learns from Isaac that bringing back Zett is beyond his skill set, but he knows of an engineer Gear who might be able to help.

The next stop on their journey is to visit Kidd, the engineer Gear. He originates from a time before the start of the war, which gives him experiences of being around humans and how the project he worked on with them turned into tools for war. After Chrome fights off another insane Gear, Kidd determines that he’s unable to fulfill Roue’s request. He tells Roue and Chrome about Heaven Land, a rumored place that’s a utopia for Gears, by Gears. Roue and Chrome decide to try to find Heaven Land in the hopes of reviving Zett. The volume ends as they encounter an obstacle on their journey.

I appreciate that between the chapters, there are writeups that explain how World War III came about, the creation of Gears, and how Gears advanced. This allows the author to include background information to help the reader better understand the concepts in the series without bogging down the actual chapters themselves with exposition.

After I finished reading Heart Gear Volume One, I thought there were interesting ideas and concepts going into it. I also thought the execution of the writing for the story was well done. In some respects, once Roue and Chrome head out on their journey, I thought the structure was becoming something closer to Kino’s Journey. Basically, they stop somewhere, encounter a Gear (or multiple Gears), have interactions with them, and then head on their way. I’m guessing that the rest of the series will be focusing on Roue and Chrome’s quest to revive Zett and the adventures they have on their travels. I especially think this with the introduction of Heaven Land, a place which may or may not exist.

Unfortunately, there’s one stumbling block for me when it comes to Heart Gear: the art. It’s rather simplistic in nature, to the point where there are panels that have little in the way of detail and literally look like they didn’t progress much from rough pencil sketches. The best looking panels in this volume would be considered average or slightly above average for most manga series. Perhaps the mangaka is trying to use this simple art style to emphasize that the series is set in a post-apocalyptic world, but I found the rough art style to be jarring to look at as I read the volume. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with any other work by Takaki, so I don’t know if this is his usual standard for his art, or if this was a stylistic choice made for this particular title.

I think that Heart Gear Volume One will have the strongest appeal to manga readers who have an appreciation for science fiction. While the series is written in a way where you don’t need to have an understanding of science, I think that readers already inclined with an interest in sci-fi will have a better appreciation for it. However, as I mentioned above, the art style is a bit on the rough side, so if you don’t enjoy looking at simplistic art in your manga, you may want to skip this one.

I reviewed this for Booklist magazine. I just hope that this doesn't go the same way as Black Torch and gets cut short because I really loved volume 1. It's a found-family situation in a dystopian world. But, judging as there are only 2 volumes out in Japan and a very long hiatus, we might get another disappointment with very little resolution! Don't break my heart again VIZ and Takaki-sensei!

I've always been a sucker for the unfeeling robot/being that begins to feel human. Think...Data, Spock from Star Trek, Bishop from Aliens, Murderbot by Martha Wells.

Takaki has written a new manga series to challenge the reader as to what we perceive as being human and finding our purpose when given free will.

In this postapocalyptic future, a young human girl, 11 year old Roue, lives with her robot "uncle", Zett. His purpose is to take care of raise Roue. Their happy little bubble is burst when, not so friendly, robots find them but a robot named Chrome comes to the rescue. Only Chrome has no base program, no purpose, and isn't sure what to do or how to act. Zett and Roue take him on and, later, he becomes Roue's caretaker. But is he hero or villain? Soulless or becoming human?

The female characters (there are 2 - Roue and another robot) who are occasionally overly sexualized and I honestly can't tell if this is meant to be an eventual romance or not because Chrome was just a metal can and became, inexplicably, hot when moved to a new host body lol And that cover really gives off romantic vibes to me.

I am not an avid graphic novel/manga reader so I feel sort of awkward weighing in on that aspect but I found some panels jumpy - story wise - and had to backtrack to get my bearings again. The art work was sometimes messy to the point of confusion. My arc was a black and white ebook though, so that could be totally different in the finished copy.

I think this issue did a great job of laying out the characters and story. I was totally invested and like I said, I love a good - what it means to be human story.

I enjoyed this first volume of Heart Gear. A young girl is being raised by gears (robots) in a post-apocalyptic world. The art is beautiful and storyline is interesting. It was very heartwarming to see the gears protect Roue. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the next volume. Thank you NetGalley and VIZ Media for the arc.

World War III has devastated the planet and wiped out nearly all of humanity, leaving behind a world populated with machines known as gears. Created by humans with the sole purpose of carrying out singular tasks, Gears seem to be the only beings left on the planet. Until a rocket with a baby girl crashes on the doorstep of of Gear scientist Zett. Raised by her robot uncle, young Roue grows up in a world of machines as the only human. One day she discovers Chrome, another Gear who doesn't seem to have an installed purpose. Zett and Roue try to help Chrome adjust to the world until a crazed war gear attacks them and destroys Zett. Now Roue and Chrome are on a mission to find Zett a new body and bring him back to life.

A sadly sweet manga with the reminder that death comes for all of us. This post apocalyptic story has peaked my interest and I'm looking forward to the next volume. Is Roue truly the last existing human on Earth?

Tsuyoshi Takaki says in his commentary that he wants people to question what we as humans see as "normal." That's actually a good summary of this volume - Roue, a girl of about eleven, is the only human in the story, and no one's quite sure how she ended up on Zett's doorstep as a baby in a rocket. Zett, an academic "gear" (in-world name for robots), takes it upon himself to raise her, but when an insane gear destroys his physical body, Chrome, a strange gear Roue accidentally woke up, takes over. Chrome is oddly advanced compared to all of the other robots, but once he assigns himself the base program of protecting Roue, we can see him beginning to change and grow in a decidedly human way.

The story quickly becomes about Roue and Chrome journeying to find a way to install Zett's memory block into a new body, but it's also an exploration of a world decimated by war where engines thereof still roam. Some have degraded and become "insane;" others are just trying their best to live and carry on according to their base programs. But all of them have sparks of humanity within them - the question just remains as to whether they can avoid the fate of humanity while keeping Roue alive. Post-apocalyptic stories aren't always my thing, but this one has me very intrigued, and it's clear that Takaki has done his sci fi research. If gears can have hearts, this is the series that just may prove it.

*ARC provided by NetGalley in return for an honest review*

The Story:
WWIII has destroyed most of what was left of humanity, leaving primarily "gears" (robots) to care and assist the remaining human race. The story is heartfelt and reminds me a bit of what it was like to watch Nausicaa and Grave of the Fireflies. Ultimately, a heart wrenching story where you know death is inevitable, yet somehow, someway, hope always appears to be on the horizon. As though the death of every predecessor was a firefly lighting the path to happiness and (to sound ridiculously patriotic) freedom.

The Art:
I really love the art style. The human & human-like character styles remind me of the human-like characters from Cells at Work, and not just cause of the emo hair cut.

Overall:
I really truly want to read the next volume and deeply wish it was already translated for review. I can't help but wonder where the series will lead next and if we'll see a happy light.

I'm enjoying the story but the weird sexualization of female characters in this manga has made me less enthusiastic than I would have been otherwise. The child is 10 years old, for crying out loud.