MJ Review: Black God Volume One

[Eric]

Title: Black God
Volume: One
Author: Dall-Young Lim
Artist: Sung-Woo Park
Serialized in: Young GanGan (Square Enix)
Genre: Action, Drama, Fantasy, Seinen, Supernatural
Publisher: Yen Press
Rating: "older teen"
Price: $10.99 USD

Imagine that not only does everyone in the world have a double (like in the old folk tales), but actually has TWO doubles. There's three of you, but when you meet one, then fate intervenes and both of you die. Then the life-force passes on to the one that remains. There are also extremely powerful beings called "mototsumitama", who are in conflict with each other and can make pacts with humans.

Keita is a charming but directionless guy past high school age, who is sponging off his childhood friend Akane to live while he tries to make a new video game to sell to a company. Akane is a bank teller, a bit older than Keita, but still has a crush on him. Then Keita runs across Kuro, a young girl wearing only a coat, who gets into an amazing fight with some guy. In the process, Keita loses an arm.

Black God presents an interesting world, although most of the characters (so far) are fairly "stock" manga characters. The exception is Kuro, and although she is still the energetic, sincere, clueless magical girl, she still brings some interesting things to the story, like her fierce determination to find her brother and kill him, or the fact that she's *not* a tsundere. However, for the most part, this story doesn't seem all that well "worked out" or organized. It's not that the "system" doesn't work -- like a video game, the rules are well-defined. It's just that there's no reason given for the conflict at all. Even the explanation of *what* mototsumitama *are* says nothing about why they are fighting one another. They just are.

One saving grace for this manga is the excellent artwork. The characters are all drawn very appealingly and there is never any confusion about settings or situations, even in the midst of a fight scene. There's plenty of detail, but it never gets in the way of the focus of any given scene. In fact, it's the artwork that really makes this manga worth enduring the thin plot for. I found there to be a feeling of something just slightly "off" with this manga, and the reason is that it's actually created by a Korean manwha artist and his staff. However, it is published in Japan, so it sort of counts as manga rather than manwha.

Yen Press has impressed me with this volume. Although they're using the same quality of paper that all manga publishers are using these days, they have taken the time to put in four pages in colour at the front, even if they didn't print some of the other chapter start pages that way. They have chosen to leave the sfx in Japanese with little translations beside them or in the margins. There are no translation notes, but there are no typesetting or grammar errors, either. The inclusion of the mangaka's story at the end was fun to read; it was interesting to hear that the mangaka and his assistants had to use pictures of Japan for normal, city backgrounds, since Korea looks too different.

This is a difficult title to recommend: I feel that it's going to depend on the individual and if the story or characters grip you or not. Personally, Yen Press is doing such a great job so far that I would say to support them and give this one a try.

Reviewer: Eric Turner
Proofer: Eduardo Menendez
Editor: Jason Punda