Toto! The Wonderful Adventure(2008).
© Del Rey
Manga: Toto! The Wonderful Adventure
Rating: Teen (13+)
Story and Art By: Yuko Osada
Publisher: Del Rey
Price: $10.95
Manga Review: Toto! The Wonderful Adventure
By: Nadia OxfordDate: Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Depending on how old you are, the name “Toto” will either conjure up images of a yappy Carin terrier or a band that sings soft lamentations for Africa. Yuko Osada's shonen manga about an adventurous boy and his dog is more like the former than the latter; there is nothing soft or quiet about it. The story treads familiar territory, but it's full of energy, enthusiasm and fun.
Kakashi is a boy with big dreams that can't be realised while he's constrained on his tiny home island. His father, who went missing years ago, left him with a journal of his travels and advice to go and see the world. Kakashi makes several attempts to leave his island, though his home-made barges tend to sink to the bottom of the sea at the brush of a wave. His first real chance to travel comes when he stows away on a zeppelin that lands near his island to perform emergency repairs. As luck would have it, however, the zeppelin is subsequently hijacked by the “Man Chicken Family.” The brood of gangsters keep Kakashi on as a galley slave, and wrongfully assume that the puppy Kakashi found contained in the cargo bay is harmless.
Plotwise, the first volume of Toto is pretty busy. Kakashi acknowledges his father's wishes, stows away, works for thugs, meets his “special” puppy friend Toto and hooks up with a young girl named Dorothy who has more than one parallel to the girl from Kansas. He's also pursued by the military, which is hell-bent on capturing Toto for their own means.
In short, everything's all over the place and nobody really stops to reflect on their life. And that's okay, because shonen mangas are not meant to slow down. Toto is full of cliches that are standard for the genre; some of the characters and situations are not unlike what's already been done in Dragon Ball and a thousand other shonen adventures. Still, Toto is so furiously paced—almost at an ADD level—that all you really want to do is go along for the ride.
Toto promises a “Wonderful Adventure,” and it's doubtless the manga will deliver that much by the last volume. It's exciting, the villains are cool and the puppies are cute...what more could you want from a story about life on the road?
