Kikaider Code 02 Vol. #01

By Jarred Pine     December 13, 2005
Release Date: November 01, 2005



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Story By: Shotaro Ishinomori / Art By: Meimu
Translated by:Sheldon Drzka
Adapted by:

What They Say
On the surface, Jiro appears to be a normal teenage boy — he's riddled with self-doubt, has trouble making friends, and owns a guitar he doesn't know how to play. But he's really Kikaider, a super-powered android with a secret "Gemini" device implanted in his brain to help simulate human qualities. Professor Gill, a former associate of Kikaider's creator, is hunting for the Gemini device… and he'll go to any lengths to recover it!

The Review
A re-envisioning of Shotaro Ishinomori’s classic tale that feels a bit cold and removes all the fun and excitement of the original superhero story.

Packaging:
The cover features a color illustration of Jiro’s head and shoulder, with a lot of bright colors and more importantly the absence of CMX’s giant logo and page effects. There are 3 color pages at the beginning of the book that look quite nice, although I think a heavier paper could have been used. The print reproduction is decent, but not as sharp in places as I would have liked. Extras include words from Shotaro Ishinomori, a 4 page interview with the creators of this new version, and some words from tokusatsu producer Hirayama Toru.

Art:
The character designs get a little off model at times, featuring misshapen foreheads or uneven eyes. With the exception of the nicely detailed Jiro, the robotic designs are pretty average. The backgrounds are rich when the action is slow. Action sequences are a little cluttered with a few panels that were hard to distinguish what was going on.

Text/SFX:
The SFX translation is a bit of a mess. Some of them are translated, while some are left alone. The ones that are translated are either subbed, with text that attempts to mimic the original art, or they are placed over the SFX without doing a retouch, leaving behind the original art underneath the translation. It is visually quite cluttered and messy. The translation reads quite clearly, although it feels quite cold and flat--which is probably a reflection of the original material given the characters. Honorifics are used occasionally.

Contents (Watch out spoilers ahead):
Kikaider02 is a remake and retooling of the classic Kikaider created by the legendary Shotaro Ishinomori. Even though his name is on this book, it is really just his concept that was the basis for this new version. The original story is one that many fans will always remember as a classic, but this updated adaptation comes off a bit cold as it seems to forget how much fun the old school tokusatsu story was.

The central character in this first volume is the robotics engineer Mitsuko Komyoji, a workaholic who has spent most of her life trying to be the famous engineer her father was before he disappeared after the tragic murder of his son and Mitsuko’s brother, Ichiro. Ten years after his vanishing act, Mitsuko receives an urgent message from her father that instructs her to come to his secret laboratory after picking up an unknown sister named Hinano. It is at the secret lab that the two sisters come across a bandaged Frankenstein-like android that Dr. Komyoji named Jiro, who has been programmed to protect the sisters and whose help is needed to escape the attacks from the giant robotic insects that have surrounded the site.

The story of Kikaider begins much like many other Japanese superhero or giant robot shows do. A crazy doctor invents some robot with some state-of-the-art technology, in this case the “conscience circuit” codenamed Gemini, in which he hopes can be used to stop the evil organization, called DARK, that the same doctor used to work for. If Jiro lands in the hands of DARK, the end of the human race will be at stake. With the doctor MIA, that means that Mitsuko must be in charge of caring for Jiro and making sure that DARK does not get a hold of him.

While there is plenty of robot smashing goodness, the one thing that this initial volume of Kikaider02 fails to do is present characters that are interesting and have any spec of charisma. Mitsuko is a brat who does nothing but whine for most of the book. It’s understandable to a degree based on her history with her father, but despite the tragic background I still found it difficult to sympathize with her. Hinano, whose character was actually a boy in the original, is pretty much a no show with only a few lines and whose sole purpose so far seems to be loli-bait, taking an awkwardly place shower in the middle of the story. The fact that Hinano and Mitsuko had never met before is also breezed over without any sort of time devoted to this meeting of lost sisters.

Aside from the characters, the story so far also does not deliver on the over-the-top, convoluted premise that is promised. When I read these types of tokusatsu or giant robot stories, I want it loud and energetic. That is where the fun is at. This re-envisioning tries to present the story much more seriously with pages of forced philosophical discourse that just drags the pace down. I much prefer figuring out the themes of man versus god and his relationship with machine by myself through enjoying the story, not being told in text bubbles for multiple pages.

Comments
This new version of the classic Kikaider really left me cold and very much apathetic. It really felt as though the adaptation of the original source material was just going through the motions, changing little bits here and there in an attempt to keep fresh, but ultimately falls a bit flat. The book is rated ‘M’ for mature, but so far I am not seeing anything that would require that rating other than Barbie doll nudity and the awkward loli shower scene.