The team behind Her Impact!, a small group of people working on their own manga, has been making waves recently with the debut of issue #0 of their new series. Featuring An African-Japanese single mother with a father who’s an incredibly famous boxer, Her Impact! shows a lot of promise.

Working a dull office job with a sleazy boss, Sadie Hiroshi finds herself happy by doting on her intelligent son. When she’s invited to a local gym to meet a fan of her father’s though, she decides to attend. Whilst this volume doesn’t delve into Sadie taking up boxing herself, it’s clear that she wants to walk in her father’s footsteps and become a fierce contender inside the ring — she certainly has the fiery spirit for it!

Sadie’s son, Aiden, asks her to pick up some manga for him as he passed his English test, and you might notice a few of the titles. They may not be widely known, but Samurai Shin is another work of Her Impact!‘s author, Mikel Miles, who writes this series. I found this to be a cool nod to other indie works, but it also shows that Sadie supports her son’s love for manga. She’s shown to be very supportive, but not overbearing, in issue #0, and I look forward to seeing more of her and her spunky personality soon. It’s well-written, and I quickly came to love Sadie.

My only criticism here is that Aiden, who is only ten, writes like a formal adult rather than a child. I understand this is likely to showcase how independent he is, yet he writes perfectly and only now seems to be learning about basic addition and subtraction. This feels odd to me, but maybe his education will be further explored in further issues.

Digitkame, Sukma Agustriyana, Joe Sketch and Deo Keo (aka Mazu) do a great job with the art, and Her Impact! looks and feels like a professional work — it may be independent, but these are no amateurs. The character designs and environments, along with the dialogue, set the atmosphere and tone well, and there’s plenty to see in each panel. There are a small handful of colour pages too, which makes for a pleasant surprise.

If there was more of this to read right now, you can bet I’d be reading it. Well, assuming I hadn’t already read it, because I’ve enjoyed my time with this small snippet of Her Impact! a lot. Sports manga and anime have always struck a chord with me due to an emphasis on friendship, teamwork and great suspense and action, but rarely do they focus on a character quite like Sadie Hiroshi, and even rarer is that this is a manga based in Canada!

Her journey may ultimately be similar, but having a single mother in the leading role as she chases down her dream, and her father’s legacy, is sure to be a heart-warming, exciting time. Bring on the first issue – I’m ready for it!

You can download Issue #0 for free directly from the creators here.