Manga Review: R.O.D. (Read or Die) - Page 2

Abetting our maniac kidnapper is a second super-talented type named Fire Inc., who's your typical hyper-sexualized villainess: wears a breast-hugging top with much cleavage, actively flirts with our heroine and regularly speaks in sexual metaphors. ("We'll both reach our climax at the same time!" she shouts in the heat – double-meaning intended – of battle.) There's a good measure of girl/girl sexual teasing slathered onto this book, much of it centered around the "homely"-faced Yomiko, though we're pretty sure the most intense tactilely sensual feelings that our heroine has experienced have centered around dust covers and leather book bindings.

Per her moniker, Fire Inc. controls flames using giant matches and is, of course, paper's "worst enemy," though we don't have any doubt that Yomiko will survive her "deflowering by fire." (Okay, that one was a bit campy, Inc.!) If their "climactic" battle frequently substitutes movement, impact lines and dynamic poses for clarity . . . well, that's not much different from too many American superhero books, innit? All I know is that our heroine defeats the henchwoman by intensely believing in the power of pulp to overcome flames and by flipping a sheet of paper at her. I'm still puzzled by her ability to make a convincing paper decoy of herself. Do her powers extend to making printed ink shift around, too?

Though Nenene's rescue isn't a Special Ops assignment, Yomiko's contact Joker also shows up to provide assistance. In his most memorable moment in the first volume, the library agent interrogates two henchmen in a manner that'd do Jack Bauer proud: he pulls out a tape of a forbidden book so dread-filled that to hear it drives the listener to madness. Sitting in the interrogation room with earplugs for protection, Joker starts the tape and has the two uncooperative villains whimpering in fear and pain within seconds.

There are repeated references in R.O.D. to deadly or just plain obscene banned texts (in the first chapter, a copy of The Black Book of Fairy Tales, a collection of erotic and grotesque stories penned for the exclusive enjoyment of the aristocracy, is retrieved from its thief by our heroine) – which leads one to suspect that the Library of England is not the most liberal of organizations. While I've tried to avoid reading too much advanced info about this series, my sense is that Yomiko is at some point going to bump against the powers-that-be. Whether that happens in the manga series or another media remains to be seen.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is the Comics & Graphic Novels review editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy size acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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