Warriors: The Lost Warrior is all about a fictional world of cats where they speak to one another and go about their chosen lives in a present day setting. The story focuses on Graystripe, an important cat in a clan of felines that resides in a previously undisturbed forest. When Twolegs (humans) destroy the warrior Clans’ forest home, Graystripe is captured while trying to help his comrades escape. Trapped in the pampered life of a kittypet (house cat), Graystripe has all the food and shelter he needs from his affectionate Twoleg family – but this is not the way he wants to live. He is used to hunting for himself and being one with nature – he is not a house cat in the least. The forest calls to him, and he never stops longing to go home. When he makes friends with a local kittypet named Millie, she encourages him to go in search of his lost friends.  After teaching Millie everything he knows about fighting, hunting, and living to survive, she chooses to join him in his journey and the two set off to find where his clan has gone.

Warriors is what many people call an “OEL Manga” (as in Original English Language Manga). The concept is basically that someone who is not Japanese (and likely North American as the scene stands now) decides to do a graphic novel/comic book and wants to do it in a Japanese style (Manga). We can’t really call it authentic manga because it was not created by someone of Japanese decent, and nor is it in the right-to-left format of Japanese books (as that is what a manga is). So the title of OEL Manga is often used to describe a book done in manga style by a non-Japanese artist wanting to use the style of the culture. Labels and history lessons aside, Warriors is a fun little book with an easy to follow story and a manga style of drawing used throughout. Younger readers will love it, and cat lovers of any age will surely be able to get a great deal of joy from it. The story is fun, as it all gets told from the thoughts and experiences of cats themselves - never from a human perspective. It’s really like delving into the mind of a cat and seeing what they see in the world that surrounds them.

In relation to the art, “cute” and “stylized” come to mind. The art is all done in a enjoyable, simplified style. Not to say it doesn’t contain detail, but it never overwhelms the reader with over the top action. The cats are all done up differently enough that you have no problem telling them apart from one another. The text is all readable and well thought since the cats have one kind of text, and human speech is displayed in a separate format of text. The house environments and forest clearings are really cool – a lot of fun detail is again put into these settings within the book. Warriors would make an excellent first manga/comic book for a lot of people – it would be an easy introduction to what makes graphic novels so enjoyable!

A cool feature worth telling, though unrelated to the qualities of the manga itself, is that there is an online Warriors game of sorts. As the back cover states: “Play the Warriors Quest game online at www.warriorcats.com, where warrior cats rule the wild!” Nothing like a game to take you further once you’ve enjoyed the book, or vice versa.

IN SUMMARY:
Warriors is a manga made with all the cat lovers out there in mind, but will be just as entertaining and enjoyable to readers who like adventure and the natural world.