If you’re a fan of convoluted panel layout, this is the book for you.
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Kiyo Qjo
Translation: Nan Rymer
Adaptation: Ysabet MacFarlane
What They Say
Tokyo is now a dark city where humans and demons live in a fragile peace after years of fighting. However, something odd is happening and some demons are starting to lose control and go back to their violent ways. A mysterious drug known as "Zone-00" seems to be behind the changes, and two young students, a demon and an exorcist, may be the only ones who can uncover its secret.
The Review!
Technical:
The build on this book is pretty mediocre. The paper is thin and a little frail feeling, and the cover is dull instead of glossy. The cover itself is mostly art, but has a lot of random things floating around (pills, candy, etc), making it look rather cluttered. The art is also set-up so that it is sideways and spans from the front cover to the back, which isn’t a terrible concept in and of itself, but leaves you with a cover that looks awkward on the front and leaves just feet and a quick summary (which, by the way, talks almost entirely about a plot point that more or less doesn’t show up till the end of the novel and completely misleads you on the events it contains) which looks terrible. On the other hand, the book contains extensive character profiles on essentially every named character that appears, which is impressive. The translation is also smooth and contains honorifics, which is nice.
The artwork is very difficult to peg. The characters are all unique and detailed, and the art has a very nice style to it. However, the eyelashes, while a nice touch on most characters, look strange and even a little creepy on the main pair. The big problem is that the actual layout in this book is one big chaotic mess. If you try to read this, you are very likely to find yourself having to reread often to figure out what exactly is transpiring, which is hugely detrimental to the book.
Content:
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure exactly what happens on the first 2 pages. It’s a crazy spread in which Shima (one of the two main characters) is fighting some giant monster with his cyborg servants (we don’t know most of the details about these characters till later, but I’ll try to give you a few of the details to make a little more sense of it.) The concept of this isn’t too terribly hard to follow, as Shima is an exorcist and Tokyo is full of “creatures,” but the way it’s drawn is insanely clustered and makes it really difficult to tell what is actually happening. Then we cut to a witch and flashback that apparently belongs to Saburo Kujo, Shima’s classmate. Actually, Shima and Mayoko (the random witch) are new to Kujo’s school. Kujo becomes attached to Shima and follows him to a bar with a talking cat and dog and another witch. We learn that the talking cat and dog belong to the witches… and then Kujo is randomly decapitated. It is one of the most jarring and random transitions I have ever seen. The characters are talking, getting out some exposition, you turn the page, and Kujo’s head is flying. Then the dog and cat turn into to humans, and the bar owner’s robot baby decapitates the random monster that only shows up in this one panel that somehow cut Kujo’s head off. For some reason, Benten, who is a Yatagarasu and one of the most feminine male characters to ever consider himself masculine (he wears high heels) enters and then Kujo turns into an all powerful ogre. But Kujo manages to contain the ogre within himself once more.
The rest of the novel contains a story about a pair of cursed motorcycle twins (they’re the spirits Harleys or something to that effect) who kill their riders and a beach story which ends with a small child who’s really a “creature” and the dog person’s brother attacking the group.
In Summary:
Although the biggest flaw with this book is the convoluted and chaotic art, there are several other issues of note. First off, as confusing and mixed up as the events that compose it may be, the plot is fairly simple and rarely actually goes anywhere in the book or thus far bothers to tie together into anything interesting in this volume. This certainly isn’t aided by the rather cliché and uninteresting characters. Kujo is a fun loving carefree schoolboy, Shima is the tough guy who doesn’t really trust anyone and is way too serious, the two witches’ characters seem to exist solely of large breasts and panty shots (made all the more disturbing by the fact that they’re supposed to be in middle school), and everyone else seems to be described by the words “mysterious” or “tough guy.” With the amount of effort put into the characters’ designs (the character bios are quite detailed and actually a little interesting), you would think the author could’ve spent a little more time on their personalities. All in all, a rather confusing and dissatisfying read.
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