Biomega

Jan 14, 2009

Beatnik

Recommended

Preliminary (Unknown/43 chp)

From the creator of dark mega structures of unknown origin, Biomega is the laidback easygoing cousin of the brooding and unintelligible Blame.

As usual, story takes a backseat to vision. This is not a criticism, but an acknowledgement of Nihei's trademark, sensibilities and priorities. You don’t check out this man's manga to get involved in a deep plot; you do it for the mood, the scope, the imagination in ambiguity. Having said that Biomega does resort to some exposition, and even 'story so far' and a chart of characters and organisations, its like Nihei feels sorry for us and is being generous, or ... maybe his editor had a go at him. Either way, visiting his world this time round is a bit more coherent and amazingly you just might get answers for questions that Blame might have made you swear under your breath.

It’s strange, but it’s like he usually just wants (or in this case previously just wanted) you to complete his stories for him, which any other time would be infuriating, but he teases you in just the right ways, like bedazzling you with amazing art, that you don’t care if you have to fill in the dots to make sense of his manga. The joy is in the journey, not the details.

I would say his manga are thought-provoking, but the surface definition of that would mean he challenges your perceptions of what you believe in, but instead the actuality is that in trying to fill in the dots, your imagination takes you to wild places as you desperately try to figure out how Nihei's architecture was built, where the technology came from, who those crazy looking bad guys are, why the good guys are doing what they're doing and just where the hell can we buy that motorbike?

Nihei takes a bike and does to it what he did to a gun in Blame. He makes that shit epic! It's a challenger to Kaneda's red machine from Akira, sleek like a bullet and just as effective as it traverses every terrain you can think of at incredible speeds. This manga has one of the best action set pieces I've ever read, absolutely incredible scope and imagination on display as Nihei aims for the stratosphere with the killer bike and ends up on the other side.

Biomega is packed with great crowd-pleasing action sequences that recall cinematic composition, aided by Nihei’s amazing ability to bring context to his stunning city designs, but above all else they're just great fun to read. Biomega really is Nihei let loose and having fun. Not that his other work isn’t without humour, his dialogue is so droll, so understated and played so straight its hilarious, but the humour seems more overt this time round thanks to the fast pace that allows for a bike to be taken literally anywhere the protagonist wills it. There is also a bear wielding a rifle, but you'll see for yourself. As ever though, characters mumbling totally mundane observations while insanity happens around them is the best source of mirth.

Biomega revolves around all the concepts and ideas Nihei's previous works concern themselves with: cut off civilisations, hyperhumanity and nonhumans bashing together with violence and indecipherable dialogue while contending with apocalyptic threats of nasty consequences involving body mutation. There is a distinctive sense of dread on every page. There is barely anyone to relate to, Nihei's vision of our future is bleak and populated by hyperhumans, synthetic in nature. There is no culture, no signs of art, literature, music, the world is drab and at the end of its tether.

The fact that you cant recognise anything at all in this future vision of Earth may be seen as a flaw in Nihei's manga, people need something to latch onto to emit their own reactions, but it is actually brave and very fascinating to read this nightmare of humanity's potential; extremely dangerous groups battling over the last remnants of whats left of our planet. At the end of the day what you're reading is the end of the world as we know it, not that we know it as Nihei drew it, but you get the idea. Yeah it's not happy reading, but that's what the bike is for. Nihei's chosen genre traits are sci-fi, cyberpunk, body horror and flat out action, and he's sticking to them damnit.

Biomega, lots of mega and lots of bio, connected by explosions. So expect lots of body parts flying around.

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Aug 11, 2007

theplayster

Recommended

Preliminary (22/43 chp)

Biomega, one of the most recent and current works of Tsutomu Nihei, author of the acclaimed mangas BLAME! and Noise. If you read those two mangas and looking for something new from the author or just looking something Cyberpunk and extremely dark theme, than don't look further.

Story:
The situation of the story is a little like the Resident Evil game theme, where a person must survive or search a person in a city overrun by peoples that are infected with a virus. Kanoe Zouichi, a biker agent from a powerful organization, Toh-a Heavy Industries, with AI-Companion motorcycle, Kanoe Fuyu, where they must retrieve ... humans with the ability to resist and transmute the N5S infection that is spreading across the world.

The story is easier to follow compare to BLAME!, because it was hard to follow and to figure out what is happening with the characters with his or her dialogue-less text. Where readers must try to piece together different part given in the manga. But in Biomega from start to the most recent chapter, you can easily follow the story. Each characters talks more with each others and, sometimes, they gave information about a specific subject of the storyline so the readers can understand what is happening, like his Noise manga.

Art:
If you loved the BLAME! and Noise mangas series or your the type of person who likes lots of details in characters and buildings in each page with a dark, gloomy atmosphere and "macabre" feeling or in another words "cyberpunk-influenced", Biomega is your choice.

The author puts lots of effort in each page with so many fine details in each scene, fighting, etc. If you read BLAME! before, you'll notice that Tsutomu Nihei art style in Biomega is more refined and cleaner. For those who haven't read BLAME! or Noise, the author put more effort in the art of the architecture of buildings.

Character:
Each characters has each their own charisma, especially Kozkof El Grevnef, a talking bear. Every characters in the manga have a important role in the story and you don't get the feeling a character seems useless. Even the bike's advance Ai-companions of Kanoe Zouichi, Kanoe Fuyu, and of Mizunoe Nishu, Mizunoe Shin. Quite an original concept.

Enjoyment:
After reading chapters after chapters, I always want to read more. The action is exhilarating , the art is a really eye-candy and every character are as cool from the start to finish even some of the villains designs are quite nice. I enjoy each chapters of this series like it's my first time enjoying my first manga!

Overall:
In conclusion, if you like dark-cyberpunk-influence theme or looking for a good manga with awesome artworks or just a fan of BLAME!. Biomega is your best choice. I really enjoy it reading it and even I recommend it for people who are looking for something new and unique.

Update :
Spell checking - 03 March 2008

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Aug 19, 2013

Agnusogi

Recommended

Biomega is depressing and distressing. The most part of characters are without exspression and few talk. The edifices is very elaborated and dominate the landscape. In this view human aberration fight for change the world.
I love the style of the author Tsutomu Nihei. The design of Biomega is detailed, with gigantic structure that dominate the protagonist Zoichi Kanoe(but is same to Killy!). Is a artificial human, and search Ion Green a immortal human, for prevent the diffusion of the virus N5S as transform the human in zombi(call Drone in the manga).
Together with Knights of Sydonia this is the better manga of Tsutomu Nihei.

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Jun 10, 2015

gwern

Recommended

[Spoiler Warning]

Typical Nihei: gorgeous if extremely repetitive black-and-white art (in contrast, the few color illustrations come off as childishly garish and ugly) typically showing explosions and combat (rarely varied or exhibiting any imagination - if I had a nickel for every time Zouichi busts into a room and instantaneously shoots everyone in the head, I could probably afford to buy the entire printed manga), Nihei's obsessions like improbably powerful guns, borrowing of fantasy tropes that are wildly inappropriate (eg swordsmen and duels), a story that verges on gibberish (can anyone explain how the bear's wish could possibly lead to transforming the Earth into a megastructure?).

It's ...

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Oct 25, 2010

xGothimisalolix

Recommended

It's strange for me to read 18+ rated Manga since I am 14 but I did love the thought of the story so I brought the first the 2 volumes.

The art may seem as though it is weak and dark, but the widescreen shots of the surrounding landscapes are excellent I think they give the series a light feel, when looking at the landscapes I feel an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia which makes me love the series more.

Unfortunatly I found the characters inhuman and wooden, I could not see emotion (even though the main character isn't human) but still a little emotion can go ...

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Apr 19, 2020

lemonbias

Recommended

Biomega isn't a series that should be read about, its one that should be seen. That's how aesthetically-driven of a comic it is, and how completely idiosyncratic it is as a representation of the mind of its insane author, Tsutomu Nihei. Despite this, however, I'm gonna make something about it that is designed to be read, because its not like I have much of anything else to do. Seriously, though: my first recommendation to anyone wondering whether or not to read Biomega is to look at the pictures, and if you love them, read it. However, even if your mind is blown initially, you may ... still be disappointed in the end if you expect this series to adhere to any normally held standards of quality.

If I had to describe Biomega in one phrase, it would be "a beautiful mess." This has two meanings in my mind. First, its an utter mess of a manga that happens to be very beautiful. Second, and more importantly, though, it is a work that's beauty largely is derived from its messiness. In broad strokes, Biomega's plot is about its initial setting, Earth, destroying itself in an icky, gooey, action-packed apocalypse and being reborn as something else, a new celestial body of confusion, mystery, and beauty, all of which are completely inexplicable and impossible to understand. Yet as a metanarrattive as well, Biomega itself echoes these themes, because its progression as a story in and of itself is one where its initial premise and all included logic are destroyed in an icky, gooey, action-packed cascade of images, and are reborn in the form of an entirely different manga for no real discernible reason. Biomega isn't a story with a beginning, middle, and end; it is more of a continuous downward spiral, where its world, characters, and images become stranger, more confusing, and far more interesting along the way. It starts as an extremely linear action piece, but if you read it expecting it to stay that way, you will be sorely disappointed. If you expect insanity, though, I think you will leave satisfied.

Read the first volume of Biomega, its hard to not compare it with Nihei's first serialized manga and what many consider to be his magnum opus, BLAME(!). Blame also is hardly a typical or fully coherent story, but the presentation of its setting, a massive, solar-system-sized non-euclidean cyber-city built by sinister post-humans and being explored by two silent immortal cyborgs, is at first glance a lot more creative. The City of Blame is meticulously detailed, atmospheric, and inhuman, while the similar city which Biomega starts off in is far smaller, less ambitious, less well-drawn, and still inhabited by humans. At its outset, Biomega is a serviceable zombie apocalypse story set in this city, with its only major distinguishing feature being its ambitious and technically proficient action scenes, which are far better than the often difficult to follow fights in Blame. Other than that, Biomega seems pretty boring in comparison to Nihei's previous resume, and this, I think, is what leads a lot of people to drop it, and which has led Biomega to rarely be included in discussion of Nihei's best works because of this.

Keep reading, though, you'll find that Nihei himself agreed. After a change in magazines following the release of volume 1, which included a shift from weekly to monthly publication and a commensurate skyrocketing of art quality, Biomega becomes a different beast entirely, grotesquely morphing into some of the most balls-to-the-wall action insanity in the medium of manga as a whole. No longer is the main conflict a zombie outbreak caused by some vaguely Umbrella-like corporation, but instead it becomes a plot to turn...the world into...biological goo(?) so it can be reborn...or something, orchestrated by immortal psychic cyborgs battling each other from imposing cyberpunk monoliths that loom over the surface of the increasingly disfigured planet once known as Earth. There's eygasmically deformed monsters, brilliantly-paneled fights, and an utterly epic battle featuring the main characters riding a super-motorcycle vertically up the exterior of a space elevator while fighting off a plantlike stalk of flesh emerging from the planet hundreds of miles below. This is in volume 4 out of 6. The earth is destroyed, there's a bunch of shit that makes the Akira movie seem coherent by comparison, and then you're left wondering how the rest of the series could possibly end. Well...

The last two volumes take place in a different setting where everything looks different and where thousands of years have passed without our protagonist's knowledge. What started as a cyberpunk action romp becomes a high fantasy epic set on a string-shaped world whose scenery looks like if Nihei's, HR Giger's, and Yoshitaka Amano's artstyles all fucked and had a premature harlequin baby. Random, bizarre new characters are introduced, about 20 Vaati videos worth of lore are hinted at and dismissed, and literally thousands of years pass, all in the span of TWO SHORT VOLUMES. Its mind altering. For some it could be maddening. Yet somehow, in the upside-down universe Nihei has taken us to, it almost works. In a way, Biomega represents everything that I love about what Nihei, and manga in general, is capable of. Because its all possible only through Nihei's incredible visual creativity and technical mastery. In Biomega, the unpolished architectural brilliance of Blame and the sketchy darkness of its own early chapters give way to some of the richest, smoothest, most detailed, and most simultaneously transcendent and disturbing black-and-white art I've ever seen. Composition is masterful, action paneling flows effortlessly, and every page contains new, unearthly visual delights.

The middle section of the series is completely unhinged action, but the final two volumes, as borderline incoherent as they are, contain so many unorganized fantasy ideas that they seem practically bursting at the seams with Newtype-level psychic creativity. The barriers between flesh and metal, between artbook and comic, between brain and body, between bad storytelling and alien genius begin to disturbingly melt unto each other, eroding into hyper-detailed manga goop more and more with each turn of the page. This manga may seem perfect if you like oddball designs and intense, hyper-violent action, yet it will disappoint you if you want it to be bound to those things exclusively. Biomega is a bizarre aesthetic experience that pushes the boundaries of manga itself in all the right ways and all the wrong ways, all at once, yet push those boundaries it does. And in way, it embodies perfectly one of the most unique aspects of the intensely author-driven medium of manga--the chaotic creativity that comes with a brilliant artist ascribing logic to his flow of aesthetic ideas that fundamentally lacks any. Weirdness, grossness, worldbuilding, artistic prowess, all purely for its own indulgent sake. That's Nihei, that's art, that's manga.

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Nov 26, 2016

nobswap

Recommended

First review ever, but i felt the need to write something after reading this. I'm not going to write a huge load of text, but here's my take on why you should read it :

1 - Do you like Moebius inspired manga such as Nausicaa From The Valley Of Wind (a minor work for a little known guy named Miyazaki, rings a bell ?) ?

Well you get plenty of Moebius inspirations in Biomega, along with outstanding art and the striking double pages panels depicting the usual cyberpunk and futuristic style of Tsutomu Nihei. It's really awesome to see how much he has improved since ...

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Dec 28, 2017

Marchearth

Recommended

I am a fan of Tsutomu Nihei's works, thus my review might slightly be biased.
Also I can easily say that Blame! is my favourite cyberpunk manga to date which makes most of the similarities in Biomega all the more enjoyable for me.

The protag-kun Zouchi is a synthetic human, meaning like Killy he can take quite the beating and do some badass shit.
And I will be 100% honest and tell that, Biomega's action scenes are nothing short of GLORIOUS. They are a lot easier to follow, more impactful and contrary to Blame! you can see what's going on (Of course I'm exaggerating, I love Blame!'s ...

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Jun 1, 2017

jsmm41

Recommended

Hay elementos comunes con Blame!, y en cierta parte de la historia podría incluso haberse convertido en la precuela (muy en el pasado) de Blame! Acaba tomando otro camino.

No me gusta el apelativo de 'distopía de zombies' para este manga, aunque quizá sea por el prejuicio hacia el género (o no) de estúpido en general. Ciertamente hay los equivalentes a zombies, pero la historia no toma el camino de una difícil supervivencia entre miles y miles de zombies ya que esto no tendría sentido frente a la relevancia y las capacidades del personaje central del manga.
Igualmente que en Blame! hay elementos de ciberpunk como las ...

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Oct 10, 2023

AngelAlitta

Recommended

Biomega one of my favorite Nihei manga of all time. It's a artistic masterpiece showing a post apocalyptic universe ravished by the undead and a super weird alien creature. It has been a while since I've read this, but the artwork, the pacing and the amazing action makes this one of the most beautiful manga ever created. Only six volumes of pure science fiction goodness this is a must read for any science fiction or Nihei fan!

The characters are shallow, although they are still very important and the beginning may seem very confusing, even this entire manga seemed like it started in the middle ...

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Mar 18, 2020

Mangodog

Recommended

A fun Post-apocalyptic art house manga! Read this since high school and it's an experience that I feel should be enjoyed for the art, violence, gore, landscapes and weird trips that would go in the series. The story can be ether Confusing or extremely convoluted for those wanting to get into the story aspect of this comic good luck with that hah!

The Characters are kind of the weakest part of the book to me as it's personally hard to keep track of who's important to follow yet they stand as interesting characters. Newer Characters are just servable. The Climax may be a little disappointing yet ...

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Nov 28, 2022

KylerSnowBro

Recommended

Biomega is a story that quite literally transcends time and space. The story starts deep in the future, following Zoichi Kanoe, a synthetic human and agent tasked with finding a human who can resist the N5S infection. A disease that has turned much of humanity into zombie-like creatures known as "Drones."

That's about as much detail as I want to give about this manga. It really is something that you should go into blind, like me. I will not pretend that everyone will enjoy this story. There's a good amount of purely tragic deaths, dialogue, and concepts that will go over most people's heads, massive amounts ...

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