Kara Dennison
June 10, 2025 
Fans of time travel antics, aliens, and mecha will want to get in on the ground floor for Cosmic Censorship. The first volume of Ryu-Ichi Sadamatsu’s sci-fi series is getting an English release from Titan Manga. Join us as we dive into the temporal anomalies and epic battles of the upcoming first volume!
A Chance Encounter
Cosmic Censorship focuses on schoolgirl Maki Makino, whose life changed forever after a near-fatal accident. In this world, the locals are surprisingly used to debris falling from the sky, to the point that it can affect in-person schooling and commutes. One such incident caused an injury that forced Maki to withdraw from her school’s track team. Had it not been for a certain alleged alien rescuing her that day, things could have gone far worse.
Now it’s years later, and that alien is back. He claims to be a time-traveler, introducing himself as “Roger Penrose.” He also claims that Maki is meant to die, but he intends to save her from her fate. That alone would make for an extremely twisty story. But when even more Cosmic Censors appear on the scene, the story gets even more convoluted. As the first volume closes, Maki finds herself wrapped up in a world of changing timelines, aliens, and altered fates.
The Science
While you don’t need to be a scientist to appreciate Cosmic Censorship, it’s still fascinating to note where the series gets many of its concepts. For example, Roger Penrose isn’t just a random name. The real Roger Penrose is a Nobel Laureate in Physics. And, wouldn’t you know it, he conceived something known as the “cosmic censorship hypothesis.” In the real world, this has to do with singularities and event horizons. But for the purposes of this manga, that’s just a bit of fun trivia.
The manga character Roger Penrose does indeed deal with issues far beyond our mortal reckoning. But that’s because he and his colleagues are time travelers, battling the strange monsters that plague Earth and keeping watch over how events flow. So why is Roger insinuating himself in Maki’s life? Why is he promising to protect her, when that would distort the flow of time? Many of these questions will have to wait for later volumes, it seems.
Mecha and Monsters
While the storyline is the main draw of Cosmic Censorship, there’s also plenty of action. Big robots and bigger monsters populate the landscape, making this a fun series for fans of kaiju films and mecha anime. But much of the fighting happens on the ground, person-to-person. In many ways, this feels like it also draws inspiration from The Matrix: secret operatives insinuating themselves into our world and engaging in battles we can’t always see.
This first volume is just the tip of the iceberg, introducing alluring questions that are clearly poised to reveal a grander and stranger worldview. What’s next for Maki and her otherworldly protector? We’ll have to keep reading to find out!
Cosmic Censorship Vol. 1 goes on sale July 1.
