MW T01 [Mass Market Paperback]

 

 

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I should say that Michio Yuki is Tezuka's one true monster main character, and also his one true homosexual main character, and that one is never quite sure that the two things have nothing to do with each other. Pretty sure, but not positive. Different people may find this disturbing for different reasons.

Tezuka's story originates with fact: in the early 1960s, the United States (with the cooperation of the Japanese) stowed away on a tiny Japanese island some deadly gas, probably for use in the Vietnam War . This became known, and also hushed-up. The gas was removed, and (we assume) destroyed, but before the hush-up, a crazed Japanese loosed some "nerve gas" of his own in a Tokyo subway, killing thirty, including himself.

In Tezuka's manga, due to some astronomical event, some of the gas leaks out, killing (instantly) the 800 inhabitants of the tiny island. The three-volume set deals with the two survivors, a 15-yar old juvenile delinquent, [Iwao] Garai, and a (small) 10-year -old 4th grader [Michio] Yuki, who arrive on the island with appropriate groups, but spend the afternoon and night together in a cave--and so, do not die.

The story opens 15 years later (the manga was written and serialized 1976-78). The boys are now men. Yuki was somewhat affected by the gas, and has occasional attacks of headache, weakness, and more serious physical problems--but is a top loan executive in a Tokyo bank. The overwhelming effect on Yuki is that his brain has been altered, and he grows up with not a speck of conscience or morality. Garai, haunted and obsessed by his memories of the dead on the island, has become a Catholic priest ...and (it seems, in volume 1), for that reason alone. Not a very good reason : a tall, strong, attractive man, he is humorless, self-centered, always wanting God to help him, to punish him, to NOTICE him . Yuki delights in crime: kidnapping, killing, torturing in horrible ways--those who were involved in the gas cover-up, and the innocent, alike. However, he is also funny, beautiful (in a somewhat feminine way--which makes disguising himself as a woman for the commission of crimes very easy), and very smart. He confesses his sins to Garai, always--and eventually seduces him. Although Garai remains, throughout the story, the only human being that Yuki cares for, Garai himself is slow to admit that he cares for Yuki, because, after all, he is supposed to be in love with God. Volume one is devoted to the flashback of the catastrophe, and the conflicting relationships between Yuki, Garai, and others they come in contact with.

In volume 2, we, and Garai, learn more of Yuki's raison d'etre, which eventually prompts Garai to show care for others, oppose Yuki in an important way...and even develop a sense of humor.

Oh yes: there was a mistake made in reversing the pictures (because the two languages, French and Japanese, are reversed). In the original Japanese, Yuki's black dog, trained to kill, and very fond of her master, is, in a gray mass, performing oral sex on Yuki. In the French picture, you cannot really see the dog, so when the girl who spies on them cries, "Le demon!"--you think it might really be one.

This is a very kinky story, with a very kinky ending. I love it.

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