KamiKaze Vol. #01

By Jarred Pine     March 07, 2006
Release Date: February 07, 2006



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Satoshi Shiki
Translated by:Ray Yoshimoto
Adapted by:

What They Say
Imprisoned for a thousand years, eighty-eight fabled beasts seek resurrection from their world so that they can unleash their wrath upon present-day Japan. And a band of young warriors would love nothing more than to let loose these beasts so that they can feast upon the human world. The only thing preventing civilization's annihilation is the Girl of Water, who is lost in the human world--without any memory of who she is! As the elemental warriors continue their search for her, they cross paths with another of their kind: Ishigami, the Man of Earth. However, Ishigami is one who wants to stop the dreaded resurrection...

The Review
Kami-Kaze is jam-packed with 280 pages of supernatural battles and very cold characters, leaving the reader with more questions than answers. The true test is whether or not you’ll have the patience to wait four months for those possible answers.


Packaging:
TOKYOPOP uses the original cover illustration from the Japanese A5-sized book, moving around the text and other secondary graphical elements and adding some trim on the top and bottom that. The cover is a matte finish with the colors are quite vibrant and sharp. The original JP logo is included on the bottom right corner of the cover.

The print reproduction is okay, a little dark in places and some of the lighter tones are not all that smooth. The bigger issue for me is that with the thick book size, there is not enough buffer between the pages and the binding. This left me having to really pull back on the book to read some of the text and see some art. This was originally printed in the A5 (8.5” x 11”) format, so I wonder if there were some issues with shrinking it down here.

There is one two-side color page at the front of the volume that is not the most impressive, but a nice inclusion. The big plus here is that the book is 280 pages of content at the standard $9.99 price point, making this release a nice pages per dollar buy.

Art:
Some of you might recognize Satoshi Shiki’s name as the risqué character designer for the anime Daphne and the Brilliant Blue, or for others as the creator of the two-volume title RIOT originally released by VIZ. While the character designs are not as ecchi as the ones I’ve seen for Daphne, Shiki definitely likes creating lanky, busty women with long flowing hair and big doe-eyed faces with long lashes. It’s the type of designs that actually is pretty standard with male-oriented fantasy titles or H-games. And yes, there is nudity contained within.

Shiki does create some great looking panels with wonderfully detail backdrops of the Tokyo landscape. The action sequences are decent enough, not quite as dynamic as I had hoped but cleanly illustrated. His artwork is pretty heavy on the tones, which when combined with his compositions make for a nice dark and moody atmosphere. Pretty solid work in which I am looking forward to more of.

Text/SFX:
SFX are not translated, which continues to be a point of frustration for me with TOKYOPOP’s releases. There is margin space here where subs could have been added, much like how they’ve been done with recent releases like BECK and Blame!. I’m also not a big fan of the adaptation of the script as well. There are quite the number of f-bombs and other expletives dropped, most of which feel out of place, unwarranted, or even slightly overused. The adapted script tries to bring out the vile nature of some of the characters, but after a while it just feels like the script is trying too hard (or taking the easy way out).

The -san and -sama honorifics are kept intact. There are also a couple translator’s notes found in the margins. One last issue I will mention is that some of the text bubbles have alignment issues with the English text, sometimes pushed far to the edges leaving a large chunk of white space.

Contents (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
For Mikagami Misao, life was already hard enough. Even after losing her parents at the age of 2, only to be bounced around in foster homes until she ended up adopted by a nunnery, Misao has always kept a positive air about her. However, when a group of supernatural assassins close in on her, including her good friend, her world will turn upside down as her school and Tokyo will turn into a battlefield. Teaturing members of the ancient clan, “Matsurowana Kegai no Tami”, this is a battle that has been building for 1,000 years and Misao, who is referred to as the Girl of Water, will play a major part whether she awakens or not.

Originally published in Kodansha’s seinen magazine Afternoon, this first volume of Kami-Kaze is very much a prologue to bigger, possibly more epic events that will happen hopefully in the next volume. So in that sense, do not expect a lot of answers and be ready for a lot of questions. The setup here in some ways reminds me a lot of CLAMP’s X/1999, only a bit nastier and grittier. You have your eternal battle between supernatural forces where the “Akahani World”, or the human realm, is where the field of play resides. The battle is between members of and assassins hired by the Matsurowana Kegai no Tami (yes, quite a mouthful). Evidently there are five Kegai no Tami in the Akahani realm, and it appears that not all of them get along.

The first battle that takes place in this introductory volume is to find and capture the Girl of Water, Misao, who is one of the five Kegai no Tami--even if she does not quite realize this fact yet. The assassins sent to capture her are working for another of the Kegai no Tami, Kaede-sama, who at this point is a mysterious character that only resides off-panel. Coming to Misao’s aid is a boy from Nagano with a big sword, holding some ancient stone relic that gives him enhanced powers. His name is Ishigami Kamuro, and he too is one of the five but is against Kaede-sama and his assassins. When Misao gets into trouble, it is Kamuro who sweeps in and beats down the assassins with ease, until he meets a mysterious figure named Higa who possesses the power of fire.

The pace in this first volume is all about keeping the reader in the dark, much like Misao, while she begins to awaken to her destiny amidst all the blood and rubble flying around her. There is not even so much of a hint at what the purpose of their fighting could be until late in the first volume--something about the resurrection of the 88 Beasts--which itself is even more unclear. There is a tabloid reporter who is randomly introduced mid-volume who I can’t help but wonder will be used as our “Guide to Kami-Kaze” in future volumes as she tries to dig up some info on the mysterious Kamuro. While I am a big fan of keeping the reader in the dark along with its characters, 280 pages of darkness might feel a bit frustrating to some.

The abstruse modern day fantasy plot aside, there are a couple events in the story that left me a little bewildered or shaking my head. One is how the assassins were all of a sudden able to locate Misao just because Kamuro showed up. If they were already in Tokyo and didn’t use Kamuro to find her, why didn’t they just grab her before Kamuro entered the picture to make things more complicated for themselves? Also, it appears that if you are a female in Kaede’s group and you botch the job, your punishment is to perform some sort of sexual favors with Kaede. No, the sex is not visible in the panels you pervs (although there is nudity). Even though Kami-Kaze is a seinen title, this sort of material cheapens the story as it feels like a cliché ripped out of some hentai game. Punishment by unwarranted sex?!? Gah!

There is big action, lots of explosions, fire and brimstone, and all the innocent humans inhabiting the world be damned! That is one aspect of this first volume that did bother me. When everyone is slicing and dicing their way through people like saplings in front of an army of chainsaws, it becomes a little hard to connect with the cold and nasty portrayal of the characters. Unless of course you enjoy senseless violence. However, even though the book is touted as a “blood-and-guts” manga on the back cover, there is nothing here that I haven’t seen worse in other titles currently released in English, like Berserk, Reiko, or Battle Royale, just to name a few. Perhaps the words from TOKYOPOP are just a hint at things to come.

Comments
While reading Kami-Kaze, I just couldn’t help but be reminded of X/1999--supernatural forces fighting against each other in a battle that has been building for a thousand years, all set in Tokyo. Satoshi Shiki (character designer for Daphne and the Brilliant Blue) creates a modern day seinen fantasy that is much grittier and nastier than CLAMP’s epic tale, but the way Shiki keeps the reader in the dark with mysteries abound is quite similar.

While I do like experiencing suspenseful action as it slowly unfolds with the characters, I can understand others who might feel a bit frustrated after 280 pages of being kept in the dark--a frustration that could be compounded knowing that the next installment is 4 months away. While there is plenty of action, and decent violence for those interested, there are also a couple bits that I thought cheapened the overall mood of the title. Most of the characters are also really hard to like, as they slice and dice their way through the innocent and just act quite nasty with each other.

In the end, I’m quite on the fence about this title. It could open up into quite the epic battle with a decent sized cast, who hopefully will become a bit more palatable with some back stories in the future. Although with the title only 7 volumes in length, we might not have enough room for character backgrounds or an epic. On the other hand, this could just end up a convoluted mess with characters that are about as enjoyable as a pimple in an uncomfortable place. It’s quite hard to tell at this point, but I do find myself looking forward to the next volume--just a mere four months away--if only to satisfy my curiosity about whether this will become a train wreck or a smooth, first class ride.