...a riveting graphic novel-memoir ... Enemy deserves to be a popular recommendation at school libraries across the land — humanizing a brutal chapter in U.S. history that even many adults seem to understand only vaguely ... At 82, Takei has evolved into an increasingly powerful voice for oppressed communities, and Enemy finds him at peak moral clarity — an unflinching force in these divisive times. Young readers would do well to learn his story of a childhood set against a historically racist backdrop, told in clear and unmuddled prose. As our politicians trade semantics, They Called Us Enemy calls upon readers to see past the walls, cages and words that divide us.

... a stunning example of how the graphic novel format can make tough subjects accessible ... Takei and his co-authors do a brilliant job of telling this story from several perspectives ... The official reasons and the ugly laws responsible for the internment camps are carefully portrayed, evoking echoes with current forms of demonizing 'others' as national security risks ... The text walks a careful balance, giving enough bureaucratic language to evoke the full cruelty of the new law without burdening the reader in too much information ... There's justifiable anger and outrage in this book, but the writers let the facts speak for themselves ... The art by Harmony Becker serves the story well. It's spare, evocative, and emotionally powerful, just as the text is. Together, this book presents a riveting story of a horrible injustice enacted with careful, logical cruelty in the name of national security ... A riveting story of a horrible injustice enacted with careful, logical cruelty in the name of national security. In the wake of similar stories happening now, the publication of They Called Us Enemy could not be more timely ... A copy should be sent to every member of Congress and the Justice Department.

A stirring call to learn from history we do not wish to repeat, George Takei’s graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy relays a story not easily forgotten, but too often ignored. The soft lines and subtle gray textures of the black-and-white illustrations sit at odds with the harrowing details they convey as Takei recounts his childhood spent as one of the 120,000 Japanese Americans held in American concentration camps during World War II ... A cogent reminder that liberty and justice is not always for all, They Called Us Enemy explores a dark episode of America’s past as it dives into the heart of a pop culture icon.

... a detailed, wrenching account of what happened to thousands of Japanese-Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor ... They Called Us Enemy should prove the most potent introduction for younger readers to this ignoble chapter in our history. The book touches on the highlights of Takei’s long career, but it’s movingly clear that his artistic and moral compass was formed by his childhood incarceration in Arkansas, as well as in two camps in California ... There are some glitches, maybe the result of too many cooks ... The book’s framing device — an older, famous Takei explaining to an audience — shifts too much: Are we listening to Takei speak at a TED Talk in 2014, or at the F.D.R. Museum in 2017, or at ComicCon? ... But the power of the story remains pure, and Harmony Becker’s clear, empathic drawings evoke the human toll of the camps, while ably conveying the greater historical forces at work ... includes numerous clips of Takei’s social activism, and ends on a note of filial piety. But before it does, there’s a chilling sense that the lessons of the past have been unlearned, in this age when the highest authorities in the land continue to target some ethnic Other.

Takei has spoken publicly about his childhood experiences in internment camps during WWII, and this graphic memoir tells that story again with a compelling blend of nostalgia and outrage ... Becker’s spare, fine-lined, manga-inspired artwork focuses intently on faces and body language, keeping the story centered in the realm of the personal ... This approachable, well-wrought graphic memoir is important reading, particularly in today’s political climate ... a thought-provoking, critical look at the history of racism in American policies and culture.

... vividly details the twists and turns of the family’s nearly four years behind barbed wire. The bestselling book also has plenty to offer adult readers who may have only a vague understanding of the nightmarish odyssey endured by ethnic Japanese residents of California and other West Coast states ... exposes the humiliation and financial hardship suffered by his parents as they struggled to adjust to their new lives and survive intact as a family.

... lively and compelling ... beautifully illustrated ... Takei's autobiographical comic concentrates on the period of his family's internment, but also reveals the impact it had on his future life and career ... Takei's tale, superbly articulated in this powerful and moving graphic novel, reminds us that while material compensation for past wrongs is important, what's more important is the ability to learn from those mistakes and not to repeat them. Even now, after a lifetime of working not just to entertain but also to improve life for his fellow human beings, George Takei continues to offer wisdom, wit, and words from which we all may learn.

Such an abhorrent event would be difficult enough in the abstract, but it becomes unavoidably distressing in this well-illustrated graphic memoir. We don’t have to imagine the setting, the family, and the oppressive national context. We can see it and we can’t turn away ... Takei moves with fluidity from this unstable environment to his later TED talk about its horrors ... Takei delicately straddles the line between the outrageous treatment remembered by his adult self, and his more benign childhood subjective experience ... When Takei drifts from his own experiences, the emotional volume drops, giving the reader perhaps an unwanted emotional break ... Attempting to chronicle the entire Japanese-American World War II experience is too ambitious for this slim graphic volume and occasionally detracts from its intensity ... at the end, it’s all too messy – too much information in too short a graphic space. We 'hear' [Takei's] commentary, without feeling it. Perhaps there were too many authors and not enough editors ... Despite its shortcomings, the book works effectively as a graphic memoir and is a worthwhile, if heartbreaking, story for readers of all ages. It’s a reminder of what happens when fear and hate consume a nation, misdirected toward a specific minority.

It's young George's point of view that shapes the story, imbuing it with childlike energy. Even as the Takeis are wrenched from their home, transported hundreds of miles and forced to live in camps, young George's openness and curiosity are unflagging. His outlook provides a striking contrast to government officials' stale attempts to explain, excuse and ultimately seek forgiveness for the evil they've done ... despite the grimness of its subject matter, They Called Us Enemy is a lively, vibrant book ... It's a shame Becker's artwork isn't in color, but she provides a master class on what one can do in a black-and-white format. By incorporating textures ranging from fine hatching to Ben Day dots, she demonstrates how digitally created drawings can have all the dimensionality of work drafted on paper.

Graphic treatments like Takei’s bring important topics to the mix of 'difficult stories' that may not otherwise reach audiences that might not pick up memoirs written in the traditional format. This development could still be in an experimental phase, but going from examples like Takei’s, it seems to be working.

There shouldn’t be such a tangible current events hook to They Called Us Enemy, but there is ... The jumping around history, and Takei’s biography, helps contextualize the events historically, and broadens them beyond a simple memoir into a national story, but the strongest passages are those devoted to the early 1940s ... Appropriately, the book looks a bit like American comics and a bit like Japanese manga ... presents an account of an important story of official, institutionalized injustice and the struggle against it in modern America, bringing to life events most of us learn about in school, but in a more vivid, first-person account than textbooks and lectures can ever achieve ... One hopes it will be every bit as successful and widely-read as March, if not more so, due to the way the history of the internment camps seems to be repeating itself, but more loudly, more violently and more crassly.

With all the heaviness inherent in Takei’s story, lightening the emotional load of the presentation doesn’t come easy. Takei doesn’t shy away from happier moments, even amusing moments, but the circumstances in which they happen taint them from being true releases. Harmony Becker does a huge amount of the heavy-lifting in keeping They Called Us Enemy from becoming too emotionally oppressive. Her work is in a Manga-style and keeps the darkness at bay even as it clearly depicts such negative events. In many ways, she is the perfect compliment to Takei’s soul, visualizing his overriding emotions to his own experience ... it is Takei’s soul that is the star of They Called Us Enemy, especially in its representation of the souls of so many others ... Takei doesn’t explore the ideas historically — that is, he doesn’t trace a history of American mass detention prior to World War II — but he does lay out the connection between what he endured and what is going on now with undocumented immigrants, and he he doesn’t try to soft sell it. He presents it as a horror that we ought to be ashamed of. And he’s right.

Takei marries pragmatic optimism and wily cheer with a steely moralism. That mixture is on full display in this charged account ... While locating beauty in the pain, and noting how the camps accidentally protected them from civilian racism, Takei doesn’t go the 'Life Is Beautiful' route ... a dramatic history lesson, cleanly told and unafraid to link the sins of the past with those of the present.

A beautifully heart-wrenching graphic-novel ... The creators smoothly and cleverly embed the historical context within which Takei’s family’s story takes place, allowing readers to simultaneously experience the daily humiliations that they suffered in the camps while providing readers with a broader understanding of the federal legislation, lawsuits, and actions which led to and maintained this injustice ... Delicate grayscale illustrations effectively convey the intense emotions and the stark living conditions ... A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today.

...[a] moving and layered graphic memoir ... Giving a personal view into difficult history, Takei’s work is a testament to hope and tenacity in the face of adversity.