Believers

Apr 23, 2009

Beatnik

Recommended

Believers is a tense pot-boiler of a drama that you could easily imagine as a live action effort directed by Lars von Trier or some other eclectic director with a penchant for putting his actors through the emotional wringer.

Three cult members are on a small island off the coast of Japan taking part in a program to purify themselves in order to become new heightened humans, and the method to do this is through a humble routine of mental exercise and meditation, eating, sleeping, and the occasional secret lust-ridden sex, betrayal, paranoia, death and mutilation.

You see, you can’t just plop three humans on an island ... and not expect it to all go haywire. Especially since their food rations begin running out thanks to a lack of food drops from their main organisation which is quite obviously in financial and legal trouble.

This all harkens back to the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, and being that this manga was published in 1999 you can feel the millennial fears and worries come to life on the page. Author Naoki Yamamoto takes a pivotal moment in Japanese news and concentrates on the lesser folk involved in the affair, and does it brilliantly by isolating them from the main happenings on the mainland. It is a staple of the thriller genre to increase tension on ordinary people bit by bit until the proverbial pot boils over and Believers delivers on that aspect at an assured pace.

The three characters themselves are well fleshed out with compelling backgrounds and seeing them rub off on each other, quite literally in some cases, is a joy. The lust that rears its head is kinetic, the paranoia and suspicion, the outright jealousy masked by hierarchy is ugly but very real.

As one extreme emotion follows another, the behaviour of the characters, one in particular, becomes more and more selfish in nature and so transparent yet the other two are so weak-willed that for the most part they can’t defend themselves from ridiculous demands and outrageous behaviour that borders on hysterical satire if it weren’t so disturbing and realistic to imagine.

That is Believer's strength, its portrayal of ugly emotions taking flight in humans so easily susceptible to outside influences, so reliant on external stimulation and ideas, not strong enough inside themselves, not strong enough to have realised how bloody stupid it was to join the cult in the first place, let alone willingly go on an island and ultimately allow themselves to spiral into the depths of human instinct gone crazy with blood-lust.

It builds to a terrifying climax and good resolution that almost veers into over the top territory but then refrains and settles for a more logical and satisfying conclusion with some form of liberation. That’s what the entire story is about really, finding liberation.

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Sep 3, 2015

Nervin

Recommended

Imagine three persons stuck on an isle. Now imagine that those people went there voluntarily to "redeem" themselves. Sounds like an interesting scenario right? Believers is a psychological drama manga that narrates the daily life of three cult members on an island.

The story is quite straightforward: three persons of a cult, who participate in the "Desert Island Program", decide to live on an small island to purify themselves from the corrupt society. This is done in two ways: through mental exercises (that involve communicating everything, even secrets) and strange meditation methods. As the reader can imagine, there is no way three persons can hold out ...

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Sep 15, 2017

spyrocoot

Recommended

First, a little background information. Naoki Yamamoto's 'Believers' was inspired by the Subway Sarin Incident caused by doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo and how that led him to read a book about the Japanese Red Army (JRA), a terrorist group which aimed to overthrow the Japanese Government and start a world revolution. In this book, Yamamoto read written accounts from previous JRA members which detailed their experiences as members. The aptly named 'Believers' is essentially Yamamoto's take on what would happen if a group of people who ardently believed in a radical ideology were stuck together. The series also draws significant influence from Jonestown and its ... late leader, Jim Jones, as well as the video game phenomenon of the 90s.

'Believers' is about three cult members – two men and one woman – who take part in the “Deserted Island Program”, a program which aims to “purify” them from the corrupt influences of modern society. The characters don't use their birth names, they are simply referred to by their rank title – Chairman, Vice Chairman and Operator. Each day consists of: meditating by sitting in a triangle formation with each other's feet touching; analysing their dreams with each other in an effort to cleanse themselves of all impurities; testing their “psychic” powers; listening to their “master” through radio transmissions; and communicating their progress to higher ranking members in the cult. Celibacy and honesty are the greatest virtues while any sexual thoughts are tantamount to heresy and will see you spend a night buried up to your chest in sand to rid your body of its “poison”.

'Believers' begins as a mystery which slowly starts to reveal itself as the story unravels and the characters descend into madness. At its core 'Believers' is a romance, but to simply call it that is too reductionist. The story is filled with black comedy, drama and psychological elements. One of the recurring themes is the idea of the line between dream and reality becoming eroded over time. It is never clear whether what we are seeing is reality or the characters' distorted perceptions of reality. It is very Satoshi Kon-esque, which is one of the highest compliments you could give. Yamamoto also brilliantly juxtaposes the dangers of blind subservience with the mindless bliss of being told how to think. You want the characters to succeed, yet you also understand that their position is due to their own personal negligence. Their conflicts are as much internal as they are external. Perhaps the biggest theme is how we try to suppress human desires. In particular, sex. The role of sex is significant in all of Yamamoto's manga and thus deserves a section of its own.

Yamamoto is one of the more polarising mangaka out there. He specialises in erotic manga, so a lot of people will dismiss his work out of hand. However, the sex does serve a purpose and is not simply watered-down Hentai. Just as sex in 'Arigatou' was used to symbolise liberation, the sex in 'Believers' fills a similar purpose. I don't recall ever seeing any author, manga or otherwise, using sex as a motif as intelligently as Yamamoto does. A word of warning: granted that genitalia is either censored or obscured, absolutely nothing is left to the imagination. In fact, there is an entire chapter dedicated to nothing but sex. Unfortunately, it does eventually comes across as a little gratuitous, but try not to let this put you off from reading an otherwise good manga.

Where the story in 'Believers' falls slightly short is in its conclusion. It was almost as if Yamamoto had written the first 20 chapters without considering how he would conclude the series. In the end it felt like Yamamoto was trying to tie up too many loose ends with too little time and it all smacks of poor planning. It isn't so bad that it undermines all the good work that preceded it, but it definitely could've been handled better. One other minor gripe was the sheer amount of dialogue. There is one scene where the Chairman is explaining his idea for a script and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I have never seen a page of manga filled with so much text and I probably never will again.

Moving on to the art, 'Believers' is the first manga that Yamamoto drew without any assistance and it was drawn entirely on tablet. As commendable as that is, the results are something of a mixed bag. Firstly, the main cast all look too much alike. They all have similar body shapes, they all wear the same t-shirts throughout the story, they all have very similar hairstyles (the issue is further exasperated when Vice Chairman cuts her hair), they all have similar faces and both males have facial hair. Honestly, the result is just as jarring as it sounds. This is not helped by the fact that the characters are not drawn consistently from panel to panel. The thickness of the facial hair is a good example of this, appearing so faint at times that it almost gives the illusion that the males are clean shaven. The thickness of the lines, in general, is a big problem. Yamamoto himself admits that he loves to consistently draw with thin lines, but this leads to a lack of depth in his designs. Characters almost fade into the white space of the backgrounds while lines which are supposed to represent creases in a t-shirt ultimately just look like lines. The art does redeem itself somewhat with its setting, however. The Island where the characters reside is based on the Second Sea Fortress, a small, artificial island off the coast of Tokyo Bay during the early 20th Century. Particularly, long shots are used effectively to show the detailed and pretty landscape. All-in-all, the art is just okay. Not great, but it does the job. Ultimately, Yamamoto's stories have always come before his art and the same holds true here for 'Believers'.

Whether I could recommend 'Believers' largely depends on one's tolerance for depicted sexual acts, of which there is a lot here. If you can appreciate it for what it is then 'Believers' has the potential to appeal to a lot of different audiences. Yamamoto himself claimed that he doesn't care for genres and that is one of the biggest strengths of 'Believers' – there is something here for everyone (except minors, of course!). For a manga that isn't likely to take much more than a couple of hours to complete, it may be worth the gamble.

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May 22, 2015

Melodux

Mixed Feelings

Believers is an adult psychological manga that has a tinge of mystery to it. It follows a small sub-division of a pop-culture, well-organized cult in the setting of a small, isolated island in Japan.

Story: 8/10

The story starts out following the character’s main activities on the island; working hard for their “compatriots.” The opening chapters are a little strange, with the characters not having being called natural names {rather entrepreneur-esque names like “Chairman” and “Operator”}, mindlessly chanting after a cassette recorded message by the cult leader, and discussing dreams over scarce food rations. The intrigue is what kept me reading, I wanted to find out why ... they were doing all of this strange stuff and after a few mentions of their final goal, I wanted to know what it was.

If the author didn’t throw a big shot of drama in there, then the story would’ve gotten boring. But once more explicit themes hit, drama was abundant. I thought the introduction to the hentai aspect was a little unrealistic and cliché, but hey, that’s the Japanese for ya. This is one of those stories that ended in a way that really made you think about what had just happened, and what’s really real, and what’s not. As all psychological stories do. If you’re looking for something that has an absolute conclusive ending, this manga is not for you.

Art: 6/10

The art for Believers is more on the realism side than traditional manga style. To me, the artist wasn’t really consistent with how they wanted to draw the characters. Sometimes the men had visible facial hair, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they were sweating buckets, sometimes not at all. Sometimes the irises in the eyes were visible, sometimes it was just the pupils. The bodies were proportionate, there were no huge distractions on that end, but sometimes the faces looked a little discombobulated, and almost like a blow-up doll. That was something that really bothered me. I also had to look for certain physical features to tell characters apart at first, because they all look basically the same – wearing the same clothes and eventually all having the same hairstyle. If it weren’t for a headband and a slight change in the shape of the eyes, I would be totally lost as far as the whose-its-whats-its. To me, the art just seemed like a rush job to get done just to tell the story. There were no spectacular panels, and I think that the distractions could’ve been fixed if a little more time had been spent on them. It’s almost as if the artist didn’t try…

Characters: 7/10

In the beginning, the characters were all seemingly stock, the only difference was that they acted out their respective “roles.” It was pretty bland, actually. However, I gave this score a 7 because you really see the characters change. One of the characters sort of had a forced change, and the other characters change around that. You still don’t see MUCH of the character individuality, but at least a little bit shines through. Plus, in my opinion, character development is better than having just a set, static character.

Overall: 7/10

Believers is a short, interesting read if you’re looking for something that incorporates survival and cult themes. It also mentions a neat little tidbit about dreams that sort of piqued my interest for further research. I saw it as a bit of a darker, sadder manga, but it really depends on your views on cults and how you take the ending. I think that’s one of the best things about psychological stories, they’re open for interpretation. However, with such a {seemingly} rush job on the art and how dry the characters were I think this manga would’ve hit full bloom as a light novel.

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Jul 21, 2018

LukePPP

Recommended

Believers is a very frightening manga when it needs to be. Not that anything scary ever happens, but watching our characters suffer for the sake of an uncaring and manipulative source is both frustrating and heartbreaking. The manga is often graphic, but in the situations depicted so is its counterpart in reality. The premise of the piece is three members of the “Happy Smile” cult are placed on a deserted island for a purification program, attempting to reach a heightened state of existence. The members are to essential eat, sleep and meditate for their entire journey. What seems like a uplifting challenge for the members ...

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