Being a girl, Asuna is unique for a Gundam protagonist. Not including Emma Sheen piloting the Gundam Mk.II in Zeta, Mikimoto is responsible for the only other female Gundam pilot, Christina MacKenzie, the test pilot for the RX-78NT-1 in 0080: War in the Pocket. Emma and Christina were not the main characters however, making Asuna the first female Gundam pilot protagonist. She's a day dreamer and has no real interest in mobile suits at all. In fact, she's not a very good pilot at all. She doesn't really prove herself to be a useful pilot until later in the series. So, she doesn't just hop into a Gundam and start kicking butt all the sudden. At the same time, she fits the profile for a stereotypical Gundam protagonist, in that she reluctantly accepts the role. Like Kamille, she is coerced by the Titans into fighting, and she sees how evil they are. But unlike Amuro or Kamille, she had been trained since a little girl to be a mobile suit pilot. That's something that I found peculiar about the first Gundam series. In the Gundam novels by Yoshiyuki Tomino, Amuro is already a soldier in the Federation army from the beginning. In the TV show/movie, Amuro just hops into the Gundam with no real training at all, which shows just how well-made the Gundam RX-78 is and how it's made to just basically pilot itself. But, I digress. As with other Newtypes, Asuna's true Newtype abilities arise in the middle of conflict, a battle manufactured by the Titans to scare the children into action in order to identify Newtypes.
The cool thing about this manga is that it doesn't really revolve around a Gundam unit at all. For most of the story, you don't even see any Gundams until the Mk II makes a cameo appearance later on in the series. Although The focus of the story is on Asuna, where it should be. So often it's become a cliche that you cannot have a story in the UC Gundam timeline without it revolving around some Gundam prototype. Why not just have the protagonist pilot a GM, Nemo, or Rick Dias? I suppose it's because apparently it wouldn't be a true "Gundam" story, hence the name. Unfortunately, the notion that you can't have a Gundam story without a Gundam seems to be the case most of the time. However, Ecole du Ciel goes beyond that. Eventually, Asuna does get her own Gundam-type mecha, but again the focus of the story is on her. Perhaps this is what would prevent this manga from being turned into an anime series, especially since the OVA market is not what it used to be and a TV anime series would practically dictate that a Gundam unit must be involved from the beginning. (The episode order of Victory Gundam was screwed up in order to leap ahead to show the V Gundam for the first episode, which wasn't supposed to appear until several episodes into the series, resulting in a bit of storytelling whiplash.) Star Trek: Voyager proved that you can have a Star Trek show that doesn't revolve around a Starship Enterprise (although the show sucked), and there was also Deep Space Nine (which also sucked, IMHO as a Babylon 5 fan, although I hear the later episodes were great). So why should Gundam shows and manga always need to revolve around some Gundam prototype robot?
Ecole du Ciel shows the earlier years of the rise of the Anti Earth Unification Group (A.E.U.G.). The UC Gundam universe is so broad that so many stories can be told, stories of conflicts ocurring at the same time as the shows such as Z Gundam or the original 0079 Gundam series. Asuna's story is told without her even crossing paths with Kamille (at least as far as I've read up to), and that is really cool because it gives bredth to the size of the AEUG. Many side story manga and video games have been created to expand the UC Gundam timeline, and I hope to see more of these manga translated for English audiences. Like Z Gundam, Ecole du Ciel also shows the Titans' use of manufactured Newtypes and how it really wrecks their psychology and turns them into emotional basketcase killing machines. But I wonder, why is that? I'm not sure if this is ever properly explained.
The first 9 volumes of this incredible manga series were published in English by the now defunct by Tokyopop. Tokyopop was certainly one of the most prolific publishers of English-language manga, with many solid titles. I have quite a lot of Tokyopop manga I've collected faithfully: Ai Yori Aoshi, DearS, Fate/Stay Night, Grenadier, GTO, Sakura Taisen, and Sgt Frog. Ecole Du Ciel, despite being a fantastic addition to the UC Gundam timeline, seems to have had a difficult time getting a complete publication in the USA. Volume 9 was originally announced to be released in October of 2008, but it didn't get released until April of 2010. This doesn't look good for those of us who want to complete this series. Two years was a long time to wait between the releases of volumes 8 (released in April 2008) and 9.
I have completed the series with the Japanese manga, but I have yet to get around to tackling reading them.
