From The New World Volume 1
Creative Staff
Story: Yusuke Kishi
Art: Toru Oikawa
What They Say
Saki and her schoolmates enjoy what they consider normal lives in a peaceful provincial setting. Only, their village cannot be of today; its customs differ from those of any known Japan. When the buddies set out on a fateful journey, what awaits are shattering truths – for them and for us.
Past winner of the Japan Horror Novel Grand Prize and the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award, genre-spanning novelist Yusuke Kishi garnered the 29th Japan SF Grand Prize with From the New World, here adapted with his merry blessing and with eye-opening pizzazz by rookie comics artist Toru Oikawa.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As fans of anime and manga one of the realities we’re asked to accept is that many of the things that we read or watch are adapted from other sources, seemingly more often than in other forms of media. A one-shot manga begets a manga series, which begets an anime series and sometimes even manga side stories by other artists. Novels and games spawn their own derivative media. Then we as fans debate deep into the night about which version of the story does the most satisfying job of reassembling the puzzle pieces. I was reminded recently of one of Japanese entertainment’s other tendencies recently, one which further complicates the matter of adapting media – oftentimes multiple adaptations are created to appeal to different demographic groups. To steal an example that was shared with me, did you know that Cowboy Bebop, ostensibly a seinen animated series, had a shoujo manga adaptation at one point? As much as I’m in favor of entertainment being created to appeal towards under-served fandom groups, trying to shoehorn one demographic’s pet tropes into an ill-fitting receptacle almost always results in an end product that feels awkward and dilutes what the original accomplished on its own.
From the New World is a science fiction novel by author Yusuke Kishi that has been re-told in both anime and manga form. The original novel is sadly not available in English, but the anime, which was simulcast on Crunchyroll late last year into this year, tells the tale in a way that I suspect is pretty close to the novel. It starred a cast of young people yet its story felt mature and incorporated human biology and sociology in a way that enhanced its fictional aspects. In the interest of full disclosure, the anime was one of my favorites of the past few years for many reasons, including those. In a perfect world it would be easy to analyze another adaptation of something on its own merits without being influenced by a previous incarnation of the story, but as a big fan of the anime I anticipated certain things of the manga. Whereas the anime seems aimed at an older age group, however, the manga was created very specifically to appeal to the shounen demographic and wholly suffers for it.
The “puzzle pieces” of both versions are roughly the same. The point-of-view character is Saki Watanabe who, at the outset of the story, is an elementary school student waiting impatiently for her latent telekinetic abilities to awaken. In this time and place, the onset of one’s “magick” marks them as an adult, ready to move onto the next phase of education and eventually to be conferred with full privileges and join society. Saki is troubled by the fact that she’s a late-bloomer, but even after her magick awakens she harbors the feeling that something isn’t quite right in her world. Her friend Satoru gleefully shares horrific stories of children who’ve been taken away by creatures called “dupe cats,” and though no one has ever seen one, Saki suspects that the lost friends she can only barely remember, whose faces and names appear blank in her memory, are somehow being purposely culled. She has her suspicions partially confirmed when Reiko, her friend whose control of magick is lacking, leaves school and disappears into the forest one evening, never to be heard from again.
As Saki and her friends embark on their school camping trip, a coming-of-age event which allows them to leave the confines demarcated by the sacred rope that has thus far kept them from wandering too far out of sight, she struggles with conflicting emotions, both those that question the direction that has been provided her by the adults in her life, as well as the feelings she has towards her best friend Maria and Shun, her close friend who has begun to demonstrate an attraction to her. The tranquility and freedom of the trip is cut short by the war between two tribes of “morph rats” – a sentient species of rodent beholden to human beings. Though the youngsters have certain prejudices towards the morph rats, who are considered a lower species, they find themselves under the protection of Squealer, a morph rat who can communicate easily with humans, and the rest of the Robber Fly colony. Without their knowledge, a rogue group of pseudo morph rats has come from across the ocean, and they must take refuge for the night with Squealer and his troops.
As I mentioned, the story plays out here in roughly the same way as it did in the anime, with only a few minor alterations that don’t greatly affect the plot. Tonally, however, the two couldn’t be more different, and this is where the manga suffers the most. From the outset, the anime cultivated a sense of foreboding. Shadows that might belong to monstrous creatures flitted through the darkness, the unknown remaining so until the time the knowledge was needed and revealed. Rather than emulate this, the manga’s storytelling stumbles drunkenly between browbeating the audience with ham-fisted dialog, forcing ill-timed humor into otherwise serious scenes, and featuring graphic depictions of bodily violence and nude underage girls. Saki and her friends lament out loud several times that the adults are clearly hiding things from them; rather than have the audience come to their own conclusion about the mysterious hidden workings of Kamisu 66′s adult society, we’re all told that “something’s fishy” as the characters do everything but stroke their chins and raise their eyebrows suspiciously. The jokiness of the script only adds to overall cartooniness that defines the text thus far. Additionally this manga volume is practically pockmarked by weird, incongruous lesbian sex scenes between Saki and her friend Maria that serve almost no purpose beyond juvenile titillation.
The sex scenes in particular merit more discussion in my opinion, based on the upfront role that sexuality played in the From the New World anime. As an element in the anime, the sexuality expressed between the characters (and not just the two female characters, mind you) had an explainable biological basis, which was then molded by their society into something meant to help achieve certain sociological results. It was something which had a presence in the story, but which didn’t distract from it. Importantly, it was also not portrayed in an objectifying manner, which is a failing of this manga volume. The sexual interactions between Saki and Maria are framed in such a way as to emulate a hentai manga, and some of their interactions additionally read as non-consensual, adding an extra level of discomfort to the fact that the characters are ostensibly younger teenagers (at this point in the anime they’re twelve-years-old, though I gather their ages are probably purposely left unclear in this version). I’ve spoken in the past about being wrongly excluded by media, and this manga serves as a good example; as a shounen manga it’s by its very nature not aimed at me as an adult woman, but I could most likely find enjoyment in it if not for the way in which the visuals and story elements serve to undermine and objectify the female characters. It’s like a big, poorly-scrawled “No Girls Allowed” sign that’s both juvenile and alienating.
When not focused solely on portraying the fine details of camel-toe, the artwork is actually very well-rendered. There’s a lot of personality that comes through in the character positioning and their implied movement, and while this can skirt the line of becoming too obvious and overdramatic, for the most part it adds a pleasant liveliness to the frames. An added bonus of this manga adaptation is that the morph rats look positively grotesque; their appearances emphasize how non-human they’re meant to seem, and the morph rat queen who appears in this volume is startling in both her magnitude and in the monstrousness of her distended body. Unfortunately the background artwork can’t really keep up, and most of the landscapes end up feeling generic and lacking the “foreignness” that even the somewhat familiar future Japanese landscapes seemed to have in the TV series.
In Summary
I’m under the impression that this was licensed to at least partly appease the fans who were practically demanding the license and translation of the original novel. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is but a pale echo of the source material and on the whole I found myself disappointed with this opening volume. While I understand the drive to extend a property to different demographics, the creative minds behind this manga adaptation seem to not think highly of what will appeal to teenage males and thus the end product often devolves into a pandering mess. There are elements that would seem perfectly at home in a hentai manga – not that hentai manga is itself a bad thing, but it’s definitely not what I expected to see in a story that I’d come to respect as being mature, thoughtful, and atmospheric. I have the sneaking suspicion, party as a result of having foreknowledge of how the story unfolds, that the “fanservice” elements will likely taper off as the plot thickens, and it’s that which gives me hope that I might enjoy future volumes a bit more. Newcomers to the story who are better able to overlook the manga’s more distracting elements might be better equipped to tease out the bits and pieces of compelling plot that remain to be consumed, but fans of the anime (especially those who enjoyed it for how utterly different it was from the norm) should proceed with caution.
Content Grade: D+
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: C
Text/Translation Grade: B-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Vertical, Inc.
Release Date: November 12th, 2013
MSRP: $10.95