Attack on Titan, Vol. 6

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By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Sometimes books just read FAST. You pick up the book, start turning the pages, and the next thing you know you’re looking at the preview. That’s definitely the case with this volume of Attack on Titan, which is nonstop action from beginning to end, and its pace is just unrelenting. We see Armin being clever, Reiner being badass, Eren learning that being in a military organization is a hard thing for a hothead to do, and lots of mass destruction and slaughter of the survey team in general. As if the cover didn’t already tip you off.

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Armin noted at the end of the last volume that the female Titan who dominates this volume is intelligent, and boy do we see that here. She knows how to protect herself, she’s mercilessly cruel and sadistic (you can see the amusement in her face when a soldier begs her to let him go, and she starts spinning him around till he’s so much meat before doing so), and far, far harder to get rid of than the run of the mill titans we’d seen to date. It takes Armin, Jean and Reiner all of their combined skills just to get away and try to shove the titan in the right direction.

As for Eren, he’s having the same problem that a reader might be having – he spent 5 volumes training and bonding with a group of friends and comrades, only to be torn away from them and forced into a group he barely knows and who doesn’t seem to like him much (excepting the resident mad scientist). Not to mention people still won’t let him go berserk and just start killing Titans, possibly as it’s incredibly stupid. He does begin to get an inkling of what military discipline is like here, as Levi straight up tells him he can do what he wants but reminds him of what they’ve all been fighting for. In the end, despite his rage and tragic past, it’s just not all about Eren.

Speaking of his new squadmates, I appreciated the flashback where we see how well they work together as a unit. Given a series like this, you tend to dismiss anyone who doesn’t have a bio at the front of the book as “cannon fodder”, and the fact that they had pictures but no text didn’t bode well. But the fact is Levi’s squad has survived longer than Eren has outside the walls, and they’ve killed more Titans than he has too. Their well-oiled machine shows Eren that he can turn his rage and anger into something useful to them. And his trust is rewarded in the end, as the female Titan is captured due to the efforts of the entire team.

This was a thrilling volume, and uplifting compared to previous ones. Of course, that means next time it will likely be even more depressing, but hey, you take your victories where you can. When humanity is fighting an unstoppable enemy, you enjoy seeing them fight back. The art needs more improvement still (Dear Isayama: your faces all look alike. Love, Sean), but otherwise it’s another winner.

Neon Genesis Evangelion Omnibus, Vols. 10-12

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By Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and GAINAX. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazines Shonen Ace and Young Ace. Released in North America by Viz Media.

This fourth omnibus from Viz will be the last for a while, as Japan hasn’t even announced when the final volume is coming out yet. I assume it will be released simultaneously here and Japan, as Vol. 13 was, and that there will be a gap between that any any 5th omnibus. That said, there’s more than enough here to keep Evangelion fans busy. So much happens in this omnibus that it’s a bit difficult to know where to begin. One thing is for certain, though, and that’s the ongoing massacre of everyone Shinji loves and holds dear is still going to happen. Business as usual, folks.

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Kaworu was introduced far earlier in each successive adaptation of Evangelion, probably as fans took him so quickly to their hearts. That doesn’t mean that he gets to be all warm and fuzzy, though he’s trying. I think it’s clear he wants to comfort Shinji and make him feel better, but he has no idea how people deal with grief – or indeed, emotions in general. He tries to make up for that by physical closeness, but Shinji, who’s already somewhat sexually confused due to simply being a teenager, lashes out at him. The manga makes things bigger – both Shinji’s rejection of Kaworu’s advances of friendship (or something more), and of his admitting how close Kaworu really got to him. In the end, Kaworu wanting Shinji to kill him manages to be rather heartwarming and sweet, in an Evangelion way.

And, in the opposite direction from heartwarming and sweet, we have Ritsuko, who has realized all along that Gendo is using her like he uses everyone else, but has been too wrapped up in her desire for him to really try to do anything about it. Gendo throwing her to the wolves of SEELE seems like it was a wake-up call, and she proceeds to give him the biggest ‘fuck you’ that she possibly can, with Misato and Shinji as witnesses. The idea of Rei being a clone is something that we’ve basically accepted, particularly given we see her get killed early on in this volume and then show up with the same body but without the emotional attachment to Shinji she had grown over the series. Despite that, the scene showing all the Rei bodies in the vat, waiting to be the next one, has not lost any of its power. It’s almost a relief that a suicidal and self-loathing Ritsuko destroys them all.

I talked last time about how Asuka gets much less to do in the manga, and that’s still true in this volume – until the end. Sticking her in her Eva may have been a safety precaution, but it was also the best possible thing for her psyche, as she manages to come to terms with what her mother was to her – and then goes to town on SEELE’s invading Evas, in the most glorious battle sequence we have seen to date in the series. Seeing Asuka, who has spent her entire life overcompensating for feeling useless and unwanted, take out these fakes with strength and purity of heart, is a beautiful thing, even if she can’t quite save the entire day. Mostly as it’s questionable as to whether there will be a tomorrow to be saved.

Because the JSSDF is invading NERV, and the orders are to kill everyone – even people who surrender, even people begging for their life. This we see, and it’s absolutely terrifying. It comes to the point where only Shinji in his Eva can save the day, but he is absolutely emotionally dead after everything that has happened to him (and remember, the timeline for the manga seems to be far faster than the anime one). Luckily, he has Misato,who gets her finest hour in the final part of this volume at the same time that Asuka is getting hers. Misato has always sort of straddled that line with Shinji between feelings of a mother, of a sister, and of a woman. It fits well with the rest of the series, where Shinji can’t tell if he loathes or is attracted to Kaworu, Ritsuko’s desire merges with her anger, and Gendo imprints her dead wife onto a clone that is both her and not her at the same time – something that she gets but he may not. All of these things are what makes up humanity – and that’s what Misato has to convince Shinji to save.

Has she done that? Well, you can get Vol. 13 right now and see for yourself, but whether we manage to get an ending that isn’t covered in orange goo is another matter. The manga has ended in Japan, so it’s a matter of Kadokawa scheduling the final volume. either way, it’s been an amazing ride. The manga world of Evangelion is still my favorite.

Dorohedoro, Vol. 10

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By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s worth noting, in case people have somehow forgotten it amongst all the gyoza and goofiness, that this series is incredibly terrifying at times. Everyone’s pasts are brutal and horrific, and it’s made almost all of them into morally ambiguous killers. The corpses that litter Dorohedoro are almost uncountable. And one of our good guys has a flashback in this volume showing that he collected these corpses and experimented on them. Meanwhile, Ebisu is learning the hard way that you can’t go home again.

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Actually, the Ebisu plotline was probably my favorite part of this volume, if only for the 80 shades of wrong it contained. For one, the entire plotline with her parents is just nightmarish. Their daughter disappears, they are distraught, broken… so they pay a sorcerer to bring her back. And he… is a man with a paint tube mask, something that sounds much funnier than it is given that’s also how he recreates Ebisu. Only it isn’t Ebisu, to the point where her own parents fled their home. And now Ebisu returns to find herself under attack by her own doppelganger. Of all the disturbing art and violence that we get in this volume (yes, even the final scene), Ebisu having her head slashed open is the one that will stick with me. Just… urgh.

Meanwhile, we continue to get flashbacks to the guy that I think is Caiman’s past. His name is Ai, and he’s a sullen teen, all right. He also goes and gets himself killed fairly fast, or so we think. As it turns out, when Shin and Noi dig up the grave, there is a distinct lack of Ai there. It has to be said that Dorohedoro is a very dense manga, and its hints, when they arrive, are not necessarily very revealing. Caiman’s past in particular is difficult as we’re given the fakeout of his being connected to Risu, which turned out to be not quite true (but also yes, it is totally true).

And finally, En wakes up again, and boy is he pissed off. It’s worth noting just how overpowered En is in comparison to everyone else in this manga. He arrives and just completely owns everyone, even Caiman, who is immune to magic… which really doesn’t help when mushrooms are erupting from all of your internal organs. Now En has Nikaido again, and Caiman appears to be dead. He’s appeared to be dead before, but this time he has his own head (maybe) back, and the lizard head is a thing of the past. Maybe.

Leaving aside the batter-fried shrimp sorcerer at the end of the book, this was a fun, if a bit confusing, volume of Dorohedoro. Yes, explanations are thin on the ground, but the story never suffers from the lack of them. I suspect that the story is going to switch back to the cross-eyed gang for a bit given that cliffhanger (and we also get a really sweet/disturbing scene of the cross-eyes reminiscing about their completely insane leader, who I think is also Ai? Caiman? Whatever…). Wherever the story goes, though, I’m right there with it.