Friday, June 23, 2006

Kuro Gane, v.1

by Kei Toume
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey Manga



Slugline: A samurai prodigy is resurrected as a clockwork man by your friendly neighborhood Dr. Frankenstein and returns to his home town to settle some debts.


Or, at least I think he's a robot -- he gets stabbed a couple times and bleeds. (oils?)

Jintetsu was found dying and picked up by a wanna-be mad scientist (he's a bit too nice to be a mad scientist.) Waking in a very retro-robot body, he finds he has no voice, but he's alive. The scientist uses Jintetsu to get revenge, but dies in the process, leaving his creation to take a talking sword and head home to get some revenge of his own.

The art is rough and there is some allusion to Jintetsu's memories and being demon-haunted, but not much comes of that in v.1. The sword does his talking for him and carries on one-sided conversations trying to figure out the robot's motivations. (He can't be bothered to even nod yes or no, apparently.)

The plots are fairly standard, but the characters are likeable, especially Otsuki, his former girlfriend. This is very much an introduction to the world, as no long-term goals are set and each of the three stories are resolved. So I'm curious where the writer will take this idea in v.2.



- Miranda

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is an excellent manga. I suppose its gonna take a while for people to follow the storyline but this is a very well constructed story. Thanks for the post!