I first read about Minetaro Mochizuki's Dragon Head (Tokyopop) in Heidi MacDonald’s comics blog, The Beat, in an entry Heidi entitled "Manga for the Rest of Us." Though the post's title assumes a certain ambivalence about manga that I don't share, it managed to spark my interest in Mochizuki's work. I went scouring for it on the manga racks – a lotta books with "Dragon" in the title, doncha know – and recently was able to pick up the premiere volume.
The cover pretty much lays out what you get in the book: a hemmed-in close-up of the book's hero, Teru Aoki, looking desperate as sweat breaks out all over his face. The sweat turns out to be more than just a manga visual convention. The teen-aged schoolboy is one of three survivors of a railroad disaster that's occurred inside an overheated mountain tunnel. For reasons that aren't yet clear (earthquake? - that flash of light that Teru noted just before the train entered the tunnel?), the tunnel has collapsed on both sides of the train, derailing it and killing most of its passengers, trapping our threesome under what appears to be tons of earth.
We learn about this slowly, as Teru does, first waking to discover himself in a dark and tilted rail car full of dead bodies, then carefully exploring his surroundings as he searches for some light. An ordinary teen, Teru possesses no special knowledge or abilities to handle the seemingly hopeless crisis that he's suddenly been thrust into – it takes him more than half the book to realize that the alcohol in the club car will make a good hand-held torch, for instance – and Mochizuki convincingly communicates the kid's initial shock at being plunged into this seemingly hopeless situation.
On the basis of the first volume, Dragon Head appears to be a realistic work of survival horror, though there are hints that the ten-volume story will be headed into more fantastic areas. The work is rated "OT" for ages 16 and over, presumably for the gore, some in-character profanity and a story reference to the heroine's period. (Is that what constitutes "manga for the rest of us"?)
Article comments
1 - Heidi M.
In my defense, what I meant by the "rest of us" comment was that the best selling manga are for the most part heavily formulaic shojo and shonen manga. (Boy forced to see girls naked! Girl forced to pretend to like a boy that she actually really does like!) It's fine as far as it goes, but there is so much more to manga that is only getting here sporadically in legit editions. I'm not a manga fan per se, but I like interesting comics by people like Tezuka, Toriyama, Umezu, Tatsumi, etc etc etc. I'd rather see quirky/gekiga books than yet another harem manga or a story of a girl who finds self esteem by embarassing herself.
2 - Bill
I hear you, Heidi: the only harem manga series that I've dipped into was Negima!, and I think I conked out on it by the third volume.
3 - Demeter
That's suggesting that the "heavily forumlaic shoujo and shonen manga" are somehow lesser than the 'interesting comics'. Some of them, indeed, are cliches, but to dismiss a whole genre within a manga series is to demonstrate little knowledge about manga series as a whole. Thumbing through one or two series is not exactly conducive when there are literally thousands of series, and even genres within genre. For one thing; what's released in the US? What's *chosen* to be released? That's something to be me considered more than the 'formulaic series'.
4 - Achilles
One thing I'd like to point out that seems to be a common theme among Manga reviewers: If the title has been adapted or rewritten and you LIKE it, the person who did the adaptation gets no mention. However, if you DON'T like it, the adaptor can expect to be villified and burned in effigy. Whoever did this adaptation or translation: kudos!
5 - Bill Sherman
A good point: I've gotta admit that unless the adapter is a name I know (as when American comics guys like Peter David or Keith Giffen get attached to a series), I haven't paid much attention to the English language adapters of manga. Perhaps it's because a good adapter is, by and large, effectively invisible - subservient to the original manga scripter's voice. A largely thankless job . . .