About the Mangaka

Ikegami Ryoichi and Okamura Yoshiyuki (AKA: Fumimura Sho and Buronson) don’t really need an introduction. While you may not know their names, you probably do know one of their most famous titles: Crying Freeman.

This is just one in a slew of joint projects they’ve done together over the years.

About the Manga

This is a fairly short series, running for only five volumes, but I have to admit If it had been any longer it would have been to long.

When I picked this series up I had no idea what to expect, and to be honest wasn’t even aware who the mangaka was. I was bored waiting at a mates house and these were on his shelf.

Overall the series isn’t anything great, especially when you compare it to the likes of Crying Freeman. However it does have a certain appeal to it, something that keeps you reading. For me it was the characters, they were all interesting to follow.

Shingo is an interesting character, usually assassins charge a huge amount of cash in these sorts of stories. And the better rep they have the more they charge. However in this series we have a top notch assassin that kills for a mere $5. This was the first thing in the series that really caught me.

Shion makes an interesting character, both as the love interest and the hook for what starts and drives the story. While she certainly is played well, I didn’t like how it was sporadic and a bit jerky in how she was used.

Shunichiro makes an excellent bad guy, especially when the relationship between him, Shion and Shingo is made more clear. I especially liked the way his character changed over the series.

Shimei is the only character I didn’t like, the idea behind him was sound and would have been good. Unfortunately whenever he was in shot all I could think of was ‘gross’. As for the sex scenes with him, I’ve dubbed them barf scenes. Something about the character was really bad, and it wasn’t just him being fat. I think it was him being insanely fat.

The other thing I found a bit off with this series was the sex, at first it wasn’t to bad. However as the series went on it felt like Ikegami was looking for as many places to put a sex scene in as possible.

Yes this is a seinen series, and scenes like that are to be expected. However I think there’s a limit to how much you can play that card.

Story wise, I liked the general plot of a family feud, and the ending was really good. If the series had been longer it would have however required some major reworking of the story, and even then I don’t see how it could have been carried for many more volumes without it getting uninteresting.

The art however, for me was the biggest issue. A lot of the time it was okay, not great, but not bad. It wasn’t usually manga art true, but if you’ve read Crying Freeman, and the likes of Lone Wolf and Cub, you get an idea of the style. I don’t like it however, I find it a bit forced.

Viz did a terrible job with this series, which I have to admit has probably influenced me greatly. First the series is flipped, something I’ve always hated from day one. However I also felt the translation was a bit weird at times, given, to me at least, hints of partial rewrites. I also found sloppy editing, with words out of place and others missing all together. Though these were minor and easily over looked.

Where Viz totally failed however was in the way they treated the art. Who ever was working on this series obviously had no idea how to handle their job. The art has been overly levelled, resulting in some panels being almost black. Others look like they’ve been smudged, also due to over levelling; this makes the pages hard to read.

However, despite this I still enjoyed it. This story has presence, it draws you in and you can really get into it. also because it’s a short series it’s one that you can realistically read all in one session (as I did).

It’s a good series, but it’s not one for my Essential Read list, nor is it one I’d recommend you go out of your way to find.

Where to Buy

• This series is OOP and no longer available. You can get it from some Amazon shops, but it’s expensive. Best bet is to second hand stores or eBay.