Manga Review: Black Cat

Train Heartnet, the title lead of Kentaro Yabuki's Black Cat (Viz), is a boyish young man with wild hair, a belled collar on his long neck and a Roman numeral XIII tattooed on his chest. A former assassin for Chronos – a shadowy organization that controls 1/3 of the world's wealth – Train now works as a "sweeper" with his partner Sven Vollfied. Licensed bounty hunters, the duo travel the globe looking for miscreants with big rewards attached to 'em. In Book One's first character-establishing commission, they attempt to bring in a former gangland accountant who has both the law and the mob looking for him.

Train faces off against the mob hit man sent to silence the accountant, and we get our first glimpse of his abilities and personality: like his feline namesake, he can leap amazing heights and is able to play a variation of bullets-and-bracelets with his especially crafted "orichalcum" pistol. Though impulsive and filled with boyish enthusiasms (for good food, for instance – being one of those characters who can eat anything and still keep his catlike figure), he's also capable of killing his ruthless adversary with a small smile on his face. Chain-smoking Sven is the pragmatic half of the partnership. Wearing an eye-patch and the kind of peach-fuzz facial hair that make him look like he only just recently passed into pubescence, he's the one who handles the business end of things, though he also gets to show his soft side when the pair hook up with a little girl who also happens to be a programmed killer.

What starts out as a fairly straightforward action series (for the first two contracts at least) quickly morphs into familiar Shonen Jumpy science-fantasy formula. Commissioned by a young woman named Rinslet Walker – a professional thief-for-hire prone to form-hugging outfits that flatteringly show off her gams – to travel to the Republic of Sapidoa (one of those countries that seems to perpetually have a big festival going on its streets) to bring in a crime boss called Torneo Rudman (love these names – are they Yabuki's or translator Kelly Sue DeConnick's?), they learn that Rudman is trafficking in the development of human weapons. His foremost creation is an orphaned 12-year-old named Eve who has nanobots in her system that allow her to change body parts into anything she wants: like transform an arm into a long, body-impaling blade. Our heroes wind up freeing her from Rudman's clutches in Volume Two, and she quickly becomes part of the bounty hunting team. Not so Rinslet, who one suspects will waft in and out of our heroes' lives whenever it suits her own selfish purposes. Some dames are like that.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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