Dec 17, 2023
For now, this is the best that manga has to offer in terms of a story about war in the 20th century.
I came to this series through wanting semi-realistic tactical action with guns and ammo. Series like Jormungand and Gunslinger Girl scratch the itch but they have run their course. I even suffered through the hentai plots of things like Gunsmith Cats and Mezzo Forte.
With nobody talking about the Manga at all despite over a decade of publication, I had assumed that Groundless was going to be the absolute depths of desperation in this search. But the series impressed me from a
...
pretty early stage.
Context is the word with Groundless. In the early chapters the series spends as much time setting up the conflict, a miasma of economic, ethnic, and national interests boiling over into a chaotic civil war (the inspiration seems to be Spain in the 1930s); as it does the tragic backstory to our main character's murderous vengeance.
While Sophia herself is not always well defined beyond her cold fury and roiling angst, the worldbuilding puts her in a meaningful context, like it does many of the other characters. She is a mixed race woman unwelcome to the colonials, but betrayed by the revolutionaries who might claim to take her cause. She joins the local militia, which has not yet chosen a side, to try to fight for something.
It also puts her in a perfect position to shoot a lot of people.
Sophia is a sniper, but Groundless understands that doesn't always mean making insane trickshots, because while she is an improbably skilled markswoman Sophia also needs to be, unseen, in the right place at the right time. While we start with her mowing down a horde of enemy partisans and then eliminating the hated enemy commander, the series as has been translated thus far has continued to find interesting ways for her to turn the tides of battle with her skills.
The highlight has been a night battle where she and her squad contrive it that a much larger Liberation Army force finds itself stuck under the streetlights that they themselves had set as a trap. This is also where we start to see the story and our characters at their most merciless, as starry eyed cute girl revolutionaries who are just trying to impress onii chan get their brains splattered just the same.
One thing that does concern me about this series is that it's not clear what some of the edge of the story is going to be in service of, both in terms of the development of the characters and the political direction. I can agree thus far with the characters choice of a third path in the conflict, and the depiction of revolutionaries as ruthless and disagreeable as they are idealistic, but it is not hard to see how that could go in stupid or even unsavory directions.
The depiction and description of racism and ethnic strife in the story is very much that of someone who has never witnessed such things, as you would expect from Japan. But to me it at least feels like the understanding of someone who has read some actual good history books and has seriously considered the subject, which is more than can be said than a lot of genre fiction authors from other countries who should know better.
Another element that could be divisive is how much the presentation of Groundless relies on the use of semi-abstract tactical maps, which become increasingly complex and important to mind as the combat zones become chaotic and full of unexpected shifts and reversals. A similar portion of panels are devoted to maps as they would be in Kingdom, with similar results. At least the art is fairly pleasant, what it might lack in detail and spectacle is made up for by the lovely character art and design, which somehow feels at home in the setting despite some of it's exaggerated pop and cuteness.
I don't know where the story is going, and I'm even well behind what has been written thanks to the slow (but as of writing, ongoing) scanslation efforts. But every chapter of Groundless thus far has been a joy, and I have become very invested in where it is going. I came just to see some gun porn and cool shooting art, and I found one of the more unique, sophisticated manga which is currently publishing.
Edit: I just read Golden Kamuy and it scratched a lot of the itches this manga did but better. Does not change what I said here though
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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