About the Manga

Fujisawa Tohru is better known for his more famous work, Great Teacher Onizuka. Which has been licensed and released and enjoyed outings as anime. As well as the Rose Hip series, also licensed and almost fully released.

About the Manga

02

TOKKO is one of my all time favourite manga, with kick ass story and art. Shame Tokyopap had to meddle in it.

The developments in this volume are blindingly fast, due to it being the final volume. Yet despite this it’s still one hell of a ride.

It’s most definitely not for the kiddies though, some minor nudity (breasts) and piles of blood and gore. However while I would generally mark a series down for this due to the excessive use of them, in TOKKO it fits.

In part due to the nature of the story, but also because of the shortness of the series. In a longer series it would have been overly excessive.

This also is one of the weak points of the series. While the series focuses totally on the Shindo element, the rest are pretty much left by the road side. It would have been good to see Rokujo developed more, especially her relationship with Shindo. It’s hinted several times that they have a deep bond, but it’s never really built upon more.

There are other aspects that would have made for excellent volumes, and could have made the series truly epic.

Art wise, Tohru is as great as always, his attention to detail is amazing, even in the midst of all the gore.

Sadly, Tokyopap had an epic fail in this volume. The re-writes are more blatant (practically hitting you over the head), and also more stupid.

For example in one panel Rokujo is talking about her brother and she says:

“five years ago when I came home from school….I heard his voice”

“help me onii-chan….monsters are going to eat me”

This differs from the original japanese in one area, but an important one. Rokujo gets a sex change from one panel to the next. She goes from being an onee-chan to onii-chan.

Another change that made no sense was when Suzuka was talking to Kunikida:

“heh, this is why I don’t like guys who don’t have guts.”

“Just to let you know, even if you use that thing”

“it’ll be hard to take them down”

However that’s not what she says, it’s really:

“heh. That’s why former thugs are such a problem”

“I’ll tell you right away, even with a machine gun”

“you won’t be able to take them out very easily”

It’s a simple change, but it changes the meaning of the panel completely, and spoils the setting. These were just two of the rewrites, this volume is full of them, and does destroy the story.

However their fail doesn’t stop just there. Like the previous volume they bleached the art removing all the colour pages (of which there were several). However the process they used was bad, making the art look, well crap.

I can’t believe that TP took another series that was on my Essential Read list, and one of my all time favourites, and butchered it. In all honesty I say don’t buy it, get the scanlation version, it’s better quality all round. In fact, after reading both volumes through together again, I’ve added it to the Junk Pile list. Save you’re money for something worth buying (like Higurashi!!)

Where to buy

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