If VIZ’s new Shonen Sunday imprint is a fun-loving teenager with a penchant for mischief, then SIGIKKI is its chain-smoking, beer-swilling cousin, offering a mixture of urban fantasy, science fiction, action, and historical drama that’s better suited for mature audiences. VIZ has styled the SIGIKKI website as an online manga magazine, posting artist profiles and feature articles alongside the chapters and plot synopses. Readers can contribute their own reviews to the site, though you won’t find any blistering critiques here; reader responses tend to be positive, save a few nit-picky comments about translation and character designs. (Sample: “It may just be me, but I’d rather not all the characters look like the love children of Peter Lorre and big-mouthed bass.”) Below are my thoughts on four of the nine series: Afterschool Charisma, Bokurano: Ours, Dorohedero, and House of Five Leaves. I’ll tackle I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow, Kingyo Used Books, Saturn Apartments, and Tokyo Flow Chart in a separate post. For my thoughts on Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea, which is also being serialized on the SIGIKKI site, click here.

The Plot: “St. Kleio Academy is a very exclusive school: all of the students are clones of famous historical figures such as Beethoven, Queen Elizabeth I, Napoleon, Mozart, and Freud. All of them, that is, except for Shiro Kamiya. As Shiro struggles to adapt to this unusual campus, St. Kleio’s first graduate, a clone of John F. Kennedy, is killed. Are the clones doomed to repeat the fate of their genetic progenitors, or can they create their own destinies? And how does a normal boy like Shiro fit in?”

The Low-Down: It’s hard to imagine that a series with such an over-the-top premise could be so pedestrian, but Afterschool Charisma squanders the novelty value of its cast by portraying them as stereotypical high school students: a snob (Freud), a drama queen (Mozart), a queen bee (Empress Dowager Cixi), a handsome jock (Napoleon). The first two chapters hint that St. Kleio has a more sinister agenda than simply perpetuating the DNA of major historical figures, a supposition borne out by the very public assassination of one of the school’s graduates. Yet there’s too much fanservice and kitchen-sink melodrama for that scene to have much impact as anything but a stunt. (And call me Irish Catholic, but was it really necessary to bump off JFK a second time?) Still, it’s hard to deny the appeal of Kumiko Suekane’s fluid layouts and elegant character designs, or the appeal of seeing Freud depicted as a haughty bishonen.

Will I continue reading it? Unless Suekane begins developing her clone conspiracy soon, the entertainment value of bishie Freud will wear thin.

The Plot: “One summer, fifteen kids innocently wander into a nearby seaside cave. There they meet a strange man who invites them to play an exciting new video game. This game, he explains, pits one lone giant robot against a horde of alien invaders. To play the game, all they have to do is sign a simple contract. The game stops being fun when the kids find out the true purpose of their pact.”

The Low-Down: If I were going to whip up a batch of Bokurano: Ours from scratch, I’d need one cup of Gundham (I could substitute Mazinger in a pinch), one cup of Gantz, and two heaping tablespoons of Shadow Star. Therein lies the problem: Bokurano reminded me of all three series, but lacked a distinctive flavor of its own. The sheer size of the cast leads me to believe that many, if not all, of the characters are expendable — a rather joyless prospect, given their young age (most are about 12 or 13) and manga-ka Mohiro Kitoh’s fondness for extreme violence. (Several pages were censored from the American edition of Shadow Star for their graphic depictions of sex and torture.) About the best I can say for Bokurano is that Kitoh is an excellent artist, staging battle scenes with astonishing clarity; you’ll never wonder how a character died or who’s fighting whom.

Will I continue reading it? Probably not. I found Kitoh’s Shadow Star too disturbing and depressing to be a satisfying read, and I’m getting a similarly nihilistic vibe from Bokurano: Ours.

The Plot: “In a city so dismal it’s known only as ‘the Hole,’ a clan of sorcerers have been plucking people off the streets to use as guinea pigs for atrocious ‘experiments’ in the black arts. In a dark alley, Nikaido found Caiman, a man with a reptile head and a bad case of amnesia. To undo the spell, they’re hunting and killing the sorcerers of the Hole, hoping that eventually they’ll kill the right one. But when En, the head sorcerer, gets word of a lizard–man slaughtering his people, he sends a crew of ‘cleaners’ into the Hole, igniting a war between two worlds.”

The Low-Down: Grungy artwork and stomach-churning violence make the first two chapters of Dorohedoro a tough slog for the casual reader. Though the basic plot is easy enough to follow, some of the finer points are downright confusing, especially two weird, gruesome scenes in which sorcerers peer down Caiman’s gullet to speak to “the man inside him.” (Yes, it’s just as bizarre and half-baked an idea as it sounds, and no, they don’t make contact with anything besides Caiman’s sizeable choppers.) The character designs are exceedingly ugly and Baroquely detailed; however impoverished a place the Hole may be, no one leaves home without donning a gas mask, a motorcycle jacket, storm trooper boots, or a Harley Quinn hat first — even in a dog-eat-dog world, everyone likes to accessorize, I guess.

Will I continue reading it? No. If I’m in the mood for a grim urban fantasy, I’ll read The NY Daily News.

The Plot: “Masterless samurai Akitsu Masanosuke is a skilled and loyal swordsman, but his naïve, diffident nature has time and again caused him to be let go by the lords who have employed him. Hungry and desperate, he becomes a bodyguard for Yaichi, the charismatic leader of a gang called ‘Five Leaves.’ Although disturbed by the gang’s sinister activities, Masa begins to suspect that Yaichi’s motivations are not what they seem. And despite his misgivings, the deeper he’s drawn into the world of the Five Leaves, the more he finds himself fascinated by these devious, mysterious outlaws.”

The Low-Down: Natsume Ono’s artwork is a take-it-or-leave-it affair; some readers will find it plain, while others will find it starkly beautiful. For me, Ono’s bold lines, sloe-eyed characters, and spare landscapes are essential to the story’s appeal, as more realistic artwork would only emphasize just how cliche the set-up is. (Toshiro Mifune and Hiroyuki Sanada have made careers of playing samurai whose self-effacing behavior conceals mad martial arts skillz.) Ono wisely allows the art to carry the burden of the storytelling, keeping the dialogue and thought balloons to a minimum. The result: a somber, atmospheric manga that promises a little mystery, a little swordplay, and a lot of angstful soul-searching.

Will I continue reading it? Yes.