Hiromu Arakawa
Raiden-18
Review
- very funny
- unpretending
- relaxing read
- not FMA
| category | manga |
| genre | shonen/seinen |
| author | Hiromu Arakawa |
| published | Jul 19, 2005 - Dec 18, 2010 |
Some mangakas can only work on one thing at a time, others need an occasional breath of fresh air when working on a single project for extended period. Hiromu Arakawa sits in the latter category and likes to fulfill short obligations whenever she can.
Raiden-18 is another of her side-projects. She made it for Monthly Sunday Gene-X, a popular Japanese seinen magazine that was about to celebrate its fifth anniversary and wanted to do it with a bang.
Hiromu was then already four years past her Fullmetal Alchemist debut, which had made her one of the leading modern manga artists. She seemed like a perfect fit for the job.
The story is Arakawa's modern take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with Tachibana serving as scientist who experiments by putting together various body parts to create monster-servants. Raiden-18, the title character, is the latest unfortunate creation of Tachibana. Why is he unfortunate? Because his master's plans for him do not take his well-being into consideration at all.
Chapter 1 tells the story of how Raiden-18 was created and how he took part in a martial arts contest... for monsters made of dead body parts.
The mangaka created a peculiar world where making these creatures is a routine science, and experts in this field measure their skills by getting the most powerful body parts they can find and put them together to create fighting machines which hopefully can win the prestigious tournament.There is one rule which can never be broken - you have to harvest dead body parts and never kill for parts yourself (which is a problem for some).
In times of war, such monstrosities can be used on the battlefield, but during peace there's plenty of house duties for them to do too, like dusting or sweeping floors. Such is the sad life of modern Frankenstein.
Chapter 2 is shorter than the previous one and has no action sequences whatsoever. Instead, we get a closer look at Tachibana, thanks to Raiden-18 resurrecting his master's first model, which has plenty to say about her.
In the third and final chapter Tachibana more than meets her match in an evil woman masquerading as her, accompanied by her poor quality creation which pretends to be Raiden-18. Faking them and promising each customer an authentic Raiden-18 model has made the impostor rich, so Tachi and her faithful servant go to pay them a not-so-friendly visit.
The biggest fun in the last chapter comes from the fake Tachibana proving to have exactly the same disorders as the original, mainly moral relativization to shake off the pangs of conscience, but takes them to a new level, much to the frustration of our "protagonist".
You can practically see how much of a fun project Raiden-18 is for Tachibana and how much it serves to regenerate her batteries for more Fullmetal Alchemist work. As fun as the story is, it serves as background for the shenanigans of everyone that appears on paper. Humor plays central part in this manga and doesn't stop doing so for even a second.
There are of course some resemblances to Arakawa's earlier works, most notably to Demons of Shanghai. We could argue that both are about running peculiar, strict businesses and about funny intricacies between employer and employee. Japanese work ethics certainly have their ways with Arakawa.
As usual, Hiromu couldn't make do without references to Chinese culture. The most obvious here is Mao starring as zombie. During introduction of this character, the author's farmer roots come out (laws qualifying Mao as "authentic Japanese produce" and Domudami not being one).
This manga's reception was on the positive side, but not many people were truly enthusiastic about it. This mostly comes from the fact that Fullmetal Alchemist fans were expecting something of similar calibre, and instead got a humorous short story. A slightly different meal, even if still graced by the same sense of humor that we know Hiromu from.
On its own though, it is a very entertaining read and comes recommended for anyone that likes a good laugh.
