Short Takes: Dorohedoro, Vampire Hunter D, and A Wind Named Amnesia/Invader Summer
If I were to draw a Venn diagram with three circles — “horror,” “fantasy,” and “things I like to read” — the overlap among these categories would be very small. As part of my year-long effort to stretch myself as a reader and reviewer, therefore, I decided to take a gander at three titles that mix elements of horror, fantasy, and a genre I do enjoy, science fiction. First up is Dorohedoro (VIZ), which is being serialized on the SIGIKKI website; next is Vampire Hunter D (DMP), a manga adaptation of Hideyuki Kikuchi’s illustrated novels; and last but not least is A Wind Named Amnesia/Invader Summer (Dark Horse), a Kikuchi prose double-header.
DOROHEDORO, VOL. 1
BY Q HAYASHIDA • VIZ • 176 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)
In a city aptly named “the Hole,” wizards — or “Magic Users,” in the series’ parlance — have been kidnapping and performing grotesque spells on unsuspecting humans, killing some and maiming others. Among the few to survive such an encounter is Caiman, an average joe who ended up with a crocodile’s head and a person living inside him — literally. (One of Caiman’s favorite activities is forcing wizards to peer down his gullet to talk to the man within.) With the help of Nikaido, a feisty short-order cook who rescued Caiman from the brink of death, Caiman prowls the city’s slums in search of the Magic User who transformed him into a scaly monstrosity.
Whether you cotton to Dorohedoro will depend largely on your reaction to Q Hayashida’s elaborate art, as she treats plot and world-building as secondary concerns. There’s a gruesome poetry about Hayashida’s precise, dense linework, as her scuzzy-looking characters dismember and impale one another in vivid detail; not since Black Jack performed a full-body skin graft have I seen so many internal organs on display in a manga. The cumulative effect of these gory scenes is numbing, however, with only the low-key, “your mama” style banter between Caiman and Nikaido to offset the unrelenting violence.
The bottom line: If you enjoyed the bloody antics of Repo Men, you might find Dorohedoro a scream; folks with weaker constitutions (or a fondness for coherent plots) are advised to look elsewhere for visceral thrills.
Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.
HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI’S VAMPIRE HUNTER D, VOL. 1
ADAPTED AND ILLUSTRATED BY SAIKO TAKAKI • DMP • 220 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)
The Vampire Hunter D manga takes its plot from the first novel in Hideyuki Kikuchi’s popular series, in which Doris, a tough cookie with a love bite on her neck, hires D to track and kill Count Magnus Lee, the local vampire-nobleman. As in the novels, the setting is a hodge-podge of European castles, Wild West towns, and post-apocalyptic moonscapes, with characters riding mechanical horses and dressing like extras in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: High Noon. The plot, too, shamelessly rips off a variety of sources, from spaghetti Westerns to the oeuvre of Shirow Masamune.
I’ll say this for the manga adaptation: the brisk tempo and unapologetically cheesy tone are a marked improvement over the original novels and animated films, all of which unfold in a lethally slow, self-serious manner. The dialogue see-saws between high-fallutin’ and colloquial in the B-movie tradition of Forbidden Planet, making the vampire lore and not-very-sexy sex scenes much more bearable. Fans of the original illustrations may be disappointed by Saiko Takaki’s attempt to make Yoshitaka Amano’s iconic characters walk, talk, and kick ass; though Doris and D bear a passing resemblance to the sloe-eyed originals, both look clumsy and stiff in their manga incarnations, especially when superimposed on the photorealistic backgrounds.
The bottom line: If you’ve been curious about Vampire Hunter D, the manga provides a faithful, if compressed, introduction to Kikuchi’s world with less of the hokum and quasi-religious solemnity of the originals.
Review copy provided by Digital Manga Publishing, Inc.
A WIND NAMED AMNESIA/INVADER SUMMER
BY HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI, ILLUSTRATED BY YOSHITAKA AMANO • DARK HORSE •480 pp.
This brick-like book contains two early Kikuchi novellas, both in a science-fiction/horror vein. The first, A Wind Named Amnesia, starts from a boffo premise: a mysterious event abruptly robs mankind of its collective memory. But not just its historical memory; the survivors of this cataclysm have spontaneously devolved to a Cro-Magnon state, unable to speak, perform complex tasks, or peaceably share territory. Wataru, one of the few humans still capable of speech and higher reasoning, embarks on a road trip across the wasted American landscape in an effort to discover the amnesia’s cause, find others like himself, and learn the true identity of the strange, ethereally beautiful woman who joins him. The second novel, Invader Summer, has a similarly tantalizing hook: a town is driven to the brink of insanity when a girl named Yayoi moves into a gated mansion just beyond city limits. Only Katagiri, a kendo champion, and the girls of Yubue City are immune to Yayoi’s siren song, and must struggle to break her hold on the menfolk. (Well, boyfolk; it’s the town teens who run amok.)
There’s no denying that Kikuchi spins a good yarn; the opening twenty or so pages of both novellas are genuine spine-tinglers, creating an almost unbearable sense of anticipation and dread. Alas, Kikuchi saps the tension from both works with an abundance of fussy, unneeded detail about his heroes’ appearance, clothing, intellect, and athletic prowess. (They’re the sort of novels in which characters say things “earnestly,” “softly,” “eagerly,” or “forcefully,” but never “shout,” “bark,” “whisper,” “rasp,” or “shriek.”) Though both stories offer myriad opportunities for exploring grand themes, Kikuchi’s take on the material is both pedestrian and, at times, unintentionally hilarious. A Wind Named Amnesia, inspired by the author’s trip to America, abounds in grotesque racial caricatures that include a tomahawk-wielding Indian, while Invader Summer boasts a dragon whose shimmery appearance pegs him as a distant relative of Edward Cullen. Yoshitaka Amano’s elegant cover is a bit a of tease as well; like the opening pages of both novellas, that sensual, arresting image isn’t representative of the interior illustrations, which are dark and static.
The bottom line: Sci-buffs, Kikuchi fans, and folks who’ve seen the Amnesia anime may enjoy this double feature, but others will find these two novellas a tough slog.
Review copy provided by Dark Horse.
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Are you sure the stylistic problems with the Kikuchi novel are a result of the author and not the translator? It’s worth noting that translators and editors are often not writers, and so unaware of the repercussions of the styles they choose to use while writing a translation. And too translators of manga dialogue often seem to not know what to do with prose, which is a very different beast.
The content itself is another story. But it’s how the Japanese often write. They use myriad tiny details to create atmosphere or emotion which often seem pointless and to add nothing to Western readers – they write around a subject as opposed to directly stating it. I find Japanese novels interesting if approached in that light, but overall they’re a bit alien and harder for me to enjoy than the typical Western book.
More accurately, I’d say if you enjoyed…let’s try this out…if you thought Repo Man with Emelio was a cinematic masterpiece, you’ll enjoy Dorohedoro. Full disclosure: I love Repo Man.
Yay, my italics worked!
Also, if you did find Dorohedoro somewhat enjoyable, you may enjoy Reiko the Zombie Shop though it goes for a very gonzo over-the-top sort of horror.
@Shelly: Good question, and good points! I have no idea if the Vampire Hunter D translation is an accurate reflection of the original text, but it suits the material.
As for Wind Named Amnesia, the translation seems consistent with the tone and language of other Kikuchi works I’ve read. For me, it’s a question of approach: I found the abundance of details frustrating because so many of them seemed like something I ought to be able to infer about the character from his actions and thoughts, rather than being spelled out for me. (Like the character being smart.) I’ve found the same problem in a lot of other science fiction and fantasy writing as well — it’s one of the reasons I generally prefer to read serious fiction over genre stuff. I’ll be curious to see if I run into the same problem when I read The Stationmaster, which I picked up for a song at my LCS.
@Jade: Sorry if I wasn’t clear — I was referring to the recent movie with Jude Law, which was a veritable organ recital, not the awesome 1984 flick with Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. (That was one of the first soundtracks I ever bought on cassette, BTW — I can still remember the words to “Pablo Picasso” if I’ve had a beer!) My memory of Reiko — of which I’ve read exactly one volume ages ago — is that it was a lot funnier than Dorohedoro. Did DH ever finish the run? Is it worth a second look?
OMG! That was one of the first cassettes I ever bought too! Pablo Picasso and Bad Man have to be the greatest driving songs ever created. Unfortunately, that’s also the reason I lost it when I got rid of a car.
When you mentioned that Repo Men movie, it just struck a connection with me between Dorohedoro and Repo Man. There’s definitely gore involved, but that tends to get a bit more play than the same flavour of gonzo-style whimsy and grit from the movie and titles like Reiko or…Tekkon Kinkreet…of which the violence is just a part of the shock whimsy, I think. If the series leaves me cold, it’s the lurching dance between plot and slice-of-(freak)life that leaves the story meandering without direction.
I’m not sure if Reiko finished or not, the last release seems to be volume six; I’m pnly up to volume four. Beyond the first book, the series gets a bit more ‘serious’ and takes up an on-going plot with Reiko herself played more sympathetically. It’s still amusing, but basically everything that made the series unique and refreshing gets toned down for something that reads much more like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. So if you like that book, which I do, you may enjoy where Reiko goes, but if you liked the first volume, you may not enjoy where it goes.
Thanks for the tip, Jade — I might just give Reiko another shot. I’m also glad to know that I wasn’t the only one whose misspent youth involved listening to the Repo Man soundtrack while in my car!
@Katherine,
Off topic a little, but there is a lot of science fiction and fantasy that does make you infer things rather than spelling it all out. The latter is a more pedestrian way of writing, and the former a more literate one. You just have to find the literate authors in a genre, and in sf/f these days there are many. Check out the Nebula award nominees for any given year. Those are awards given by writers to writers, and they’re quality books and stories.
Nora Jemisin’s Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was one I read recently that I found to be like that. It’s her first book, but very good. She has a Nebula-nominated short online that I tried before I bought her book (It’s linked from her site.)
I tried an html link but it didn’t work. NK Jemisin:
http://nkjemisin.com/bibliography/
Thanks for the recommendations, Shelly — I never know where to start, so I’m more likely to stick to authors I know I’ll enjoy, e.g. Ian McEwan, Muriel Spark, Chang-rae Lee. I will go follow that link you posted right now!