Geobreeders (small edition) Vol. #03

By Mike Dungan     January 23, 2005
Release Date: December 01, 2004



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Akihiro Ito
Translated by:Laura Jackson and Yoko Kobayashi
Adapted by:

What They Say
Shoot first, ask questions later. Kagura Security is on vacation for three days, but can they avoid blowing things up? Don't bet on it! their arch-enemies, The Phantom Cats, don't take coffee breaks! Join the women of Kagura Security as they fail to have a good time on their summer vacation.

The Review
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Taba's apartment having been blown up in the previous volume, he's moved into the basement of the building Kagura operates out of. Maya has learned to cook for him, which would be great except she only knows how to make one kind of spaghetti. Which she serves for him every single meal.

It's summer and it's time for a vacation. Taba, Maya and Yuka are the only ones with nowhere to go, so they spend their time in the basement of Kagura Security. Takami Sakuragi returns to her hometown, a place with some bad memories for her. She's a fugitive of a certain organization and she has no desire to return to them. Unfortunately, an old acquaintance from that organization sees her. What follows is a tense reunion as they dance around the issue of Sakuragi's former employment and her chance meeting today. Finally, the trap is sprung and Sakuragi is captured. Her summer vacation is spent trying to get away from them.

Eiko Rando has returned home and is visiting with her younger brother. She's in a yukata and they're walking through the woods to get to the fireworks festival, but they've become lost. Some guys in a car stop to give them a lift, but they turn out to be way too grabby with Rando. They flee the car and pursued, but Eiko puts her hand-to-hand skills to great use to take them out in a great fight scene and some hilarious dialogue between Eiko and her brother.

Yuu Himehagi returns home as well, where she spends all her time sleeping. With about a million brothers and sisters, that means it's time to play games with Yuu. They dress her up and draw on her face, and she never realizes it, even when she wakes up and heads out to the store to buy cigarettes.

A major case comes up at Kagura, but when Yuka and Taba try to raise the vacationing employees, absolutely no one answers.

In the big story of this volume, Maki "Red Shooting Star" Umezaki goes back home to visit the crime boss she once worked for. Their current hired gun is none other than Ryuji, Maki's former lover and the man who taught her everything she knows, including her dress sense. The two of them have a drink at a bar when a "business deal" goes wrong. Much gunfire ensues, with Maki and Ryu working like the team they once were. Her old boss convinces her to help him with a deal going down at the docks that night. A veritable army of hired guns on both sides are there, and someone decides to throw a match into the powder keg. Double-crosses and double-double-crosses are revealed, with a phantom cat thrown in to sweeten the deal. She's after Ryu, with whom she has a surprising history.

On an airplane back to Kagura, Yuu is sleeping. Unfortunately, it's a plane full of phantom cats. The are trying to deliver a special passenger to the Black Cat. Both the Hounds and Kagura are trying to stop it and what follows is one of the most insane capture operations ever put to paper.

Comments
Geobreeders is my favorite action manga. Taba is a great leading man, because he really is nothing more than a simple salaryman in a very extraordinary job. The women are all hilarious, with great distinctive personalities. Akihiro Ito is quite obviously a fan of John Woo's Hong Kong action movies, as there are plenty of homages to them throughout his books. The action in Geobreeders flows at breakneck speed, taking the reader on one adrenaline-pumping ride after another. His artwork has a slightly rough edge to it, but it simply adds to the gritty feel. I love his sense of humor as well, such as when Maki is trying to explain she's now an office lady to her old boss.

The cover is a composite image. Against an image of the falling dusk is Maki in her white linen suit firing her twin broom-handle Mausers, Eiko in a yukata with her geta-clad foot raised in a high-kick, a small image of Maya, and a large image of Taba and Yuka looking over everyone. There are broad purple bands across the top and bottom with the logo, author's name, volume number and review quote. The back cover is a fun image of the Kagura gang seen from above. We're looking down on them as they look up at us. Yuu, Eiko, Takami, Maya and Maki are in a circle around Taba, with Yuka on his shoulders pointing directly at the viewer, with confetti falling all about them. The overall look is a good one, while maintaining CPM's current corporate look. The translation and English adaptation by Laura Jackson and Yoko Kobayashi is among the very best in the industry. Their dialogue flows beautifully, fully conveying the story without resorting to clichés or cheap pop-culture references. There are four pages of character introductions at the front of the book. It's set up like a bulletin board with instant photos and typed notes on lined paper tacked to it. the back of the book continues that theme with two pages of a bio of Ito and a preview page of the next volume. The excellent covers that CPM used in it's monthly release format are reproduced as well, though in black and white.

Now the bad news. When Geobreeders was being published as a monthly comic back in 1999/2000, CPM flipped the art and edited out all nudity to get it into more stores. when it was collected into the older, larger $16 book, the editing wasn't undone. It still isn't. This is simply a straight "port" of the old book into the now industry standard B6-sized $10 format. The art is still flipped. The nudity is still edited out. As bad as that is, the art reproduction is even worse. This is quite possibly the worst art reproduction of any book in my manga collection. I can walk over to my beat-up office copier with my Japanese tankoubans and get better art reproduction. Images are grainy. Blacks bleed. Screentones don't reproduce right. I honestly never realized how good an artist Ito was until I bought the Japanese editions. The CPM books are that bad. It is hard to see this volume appealing to anyone except CPM's accountants. This feels like, to me, a cynical attempt by CPM to cash in on the blazing hot $10 manga market with minimal outlay on their part. The sad thing is that had Geobreeders been properly relaunched with rescanned art, unflipped and unedited, I'm sure the sales to people who had been put off by the previous release, as well as new readers and buyers convinced to buy it due to the positive reviews would have easily offset the additional cost. Great story, art and translation/adaptation. Terrible art reproduction and edited art. It's your choice which is more important. Personally, if I hadn't been reviewing it, I wouldn't have bought it.