Loose Senki: Old Boy
Old Boy

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The name Old Boy had been ringing in my ears for a long time. Sometimes praised, sometimes criticized, it intrigued me without ever fully drawing me in. It must be said that at a time when new releases follow one another at a frenetic pace, often more flashy than profound, it becomes difficult to focus on an older, more discreet work. But one day, while out walking, I stumbled upon the French double edition. One glance, one impulse. It was, without exaggeration, one of my best decisions as a reader.

Old Boy offered me a story of rare density and raw intensity—as only the thrillers of ... the 1980s knew how to do. Here's why it deserves your full attention.

Drawings: 9/10
Minegishi Shinmei does not seek to impress with his artwork, but he captures the essence: the atmosphere. His style accurately reflects the darkness of the story. Every glance, every silence carries weight. We physically feel what the characters are going through. And from time to time, true tableaux emerge: panels that, in an instant, reveal a harsh, nocturnal, inaccessible Tokyo. A Tokyo that we observe without ever fully understanding it, like the story itself.

Cutting: 9/10
The pacing is masterful from start to finish. It builds suspense with surgical precision, alternating between restrained tension and explosive revelations. Each panel seems designed to strike at just the right moment, without ever resorting to cheap spectacle. We move forward with the constant feeling of being manipulated—and that's exactly what we expect from a good thriller.

Story: 9.5/10
The story may seem simple: a man locked up for ten years for no apparent reason, then released. He seeks to understand, to take revenge. But very quickly, this starting point shifts into a much more complex mind game, bordering on madness. A mental game of hide-and-seek where each answer creates new areas of uncertainty.

The great strength of the story lies in its handling of information: we move forward, we think we are making progress, but with each step, the truth seems to recede. Like Goto, we are guided, trapped, shaken up. And above all, we wait for that key element—the one that the author carefully hides from us—which will redefine everything we thought we understood.

Development: 10/10
The story doesn't just unfold its mystery. It evolves, tightens, and becomes denser. The dialogues become more tense, the confrontations more intimate, and each character gains depth. The script never talks down to us; it includes us in this perverse chess game, the rules of which we can barely guess.

Characters: 10/10
This is where Old Boy reaches its peak. Goto, the protagonist, embodies raw, silent, dignified masculinity—a man shaped by pain, but who never breaks. He is no superhero. He is a man who takes hits, who falls, but who gets back up. An old-fashioned figure, the likes of which we no longer see.

Opposite him, Dojima, the sadistic, omniscient, intangible master of the game, embodies the perfect adversary. He is intellect versus strength, control versus resistance. And between them gravitate secondary characters who are never mere extras: Kusama, Eri... they all have a function, a flaw, a weight in the balance of the story. They are not there to serve the plot, they are the plot.

Above all, their relationships are disturbingly realistic: conflictual, ambiguous, painful—deeply human.

Atmosphere: 9.5/10
Old Boy has a rare and authentic atmosphere, made up of silences and glances. It is not gratuitous nostalgia for the 1980s, but rather a fidelity to a time when stories took the time to build strong characters, marked by life rather than bravado.

We could talk for hours about Old Boy. About its subtle writing, its metaphors, its mounting tension. But that would betray the experience that the manga offers: an intimate dive into the dark corners of the human soul, unvarnished and unfiltered.

Where Park Chan-Wook and Spike Lee have delivered very personal film adaptations—one disturbing and perverse, the other... forgettable—the original manga stands out for its realism and humanity. There is no spectacular revenge here. Just a slow, inevitable descent into a truth as cold as it is shocking.

In short, Old Boy will leave no one indifferent. It is a story that leaves a mark, that works silently, that leaves traces.

And for that, I would like to thank Goto, Dojima, and all the others.

Give it a chance. Read Old Boy.
(And above all, don't watch Spike Lee's version.)

A lot of people like me will have probably gone into this manga having watched Park Chan Wook's Oldboy (2003), arguably one of the greatest thrillers of all time with one of the most shocking twists to hit the big screen - also based on this manga of the same name.

Unfortunately those lofty expectations are almost never met. Understandably there are many flourishes the film has that the manga cannot compete with: on a technical aspect the film is basically flawless (the one shot hallway fight scene comes to mind). Even taking this into account however, or disregarding the films rendition completely, the manga still ... has wide missteps.

Firstly, the beginning. In the manga Goto (the MC) is almost instantly out of his imprisonment. He seems like he is completely unfazed, apart from appreciating his new found freedom. It's almost like he hasn't just spent the past ten years with just a TV for company. Additionally, we never get so much as a glimpse of his life in prison. The most we understand is that he almost immediately focused on working out and got ripped. With the manga being 8 volumes long, surely some of those chapters could have been devoted to his time in prison? Contrast these details with the films depiction of the prison time, of which we get much more of. We see Oh Dae-Su (the film MC) fall into despair, begging his captors to be released, masturbating to whatever women he can lay eyes on on his TV, attempting suicide, essentially going crazy. I understand that the two characters can obviously be different: Tsuchiya, the mangaka, may have wanted to create a more macho and strong protagonist which admittedly fits better with the noir/gekiga style the manga falls under. However this doesn't change the fact that the film's protagonist is infinitely more interesting as you can sympathize with him, but above all his character's plight is more believable. The manga chooses to make the protagonist laid back, he finds it hard to think who would hate him enough to do this. Meanwhile the film protagonist is a deplorable drunkard-womanizer prior to his imprisonment, who finds it hard to decide on who his captor could be because so many people hate him anyway. In my opinion the latter makes for a much more captivating story.

My second issue is with how comical it is that Goto almost does nothing to find out the reason he was held captive , instead the plot is pushed along by hints and clues that are never found by Goto himself but are rather handed to him on a silver platter by a side character or even the antagonist himself. This adds to another gripe which is that the antagonist never really comes off as threatening, he "handicaps" himself to help Goto but does basically nothing to threaten people on Goto's side. This, coupled with many plot conveniences make the read un engaging at times, especially coming off of the movie which is much more brutal; where the stakes are much more clear; where the consequences of Goto's actions are actually felt in character deaths.

*SPOILER SECTION*
My final issue has to do with the ending and the twist, so please stop reading if you haven't watched the movie or manga. In the manga it turns out that the antagonist imprisoned Goto because he was the only person who ever saw his loneliness, as Goto cried once in elementary school while watching him sing badly in class. This is a pretty poor excuse for a motive in context, made worse by the fact that Goto, after meandering his way through the story still doesn't reach this conclusion himself, the antagonist has to tell him. The manga essentially blue balls you right until the last chapter. Admittedly the motive isn't necessarily bad as it brings to mind interesting thoughts on loneliness; both the antagonist and Goto are solitary characters, and in that moment they may have understood each other more than anyone else in their lives ever would again. The humiliated antagonist may have retaliated out of spite, for being acknowledged by a popular kid who had no idea the suffering he went through. Maybe this is why he imprisoned Goto, to force him into his own loneliness? I can't be sure, because this revelation comes too late in the story and is forgotten almost as soon as it is mentioned. This is an interesting topic but is, in the end, too esoteric for its own good; the premise is wasted on it - there is simply no logical reason to subjecting someone to a ten year imprisonment for something so benign.

In the film on the other hand, it is revealed that the antagonist had sex with his sister, the MC witnessed this and unintentionally caused a rumor to be spread in school around this, eventually leading the antagonist's sister to suicide. In retaliation, the antagonist coerces Oh Dae-Su into having sex with his estranged daughter unknowingly via hypnosis, thereby subjecting him to the same suffering he had. (Who would have thought, the Japanese version isn't actually the one with incest, lol). Straight away this reveal is all the more disturbing, interesting and worth the wait - but most of all it gives a believable purpose for Oh Dae-Su's imprisonment, since his daughter had to grow up for the plan to be enacted. This reveal ties up the film neatly, meanwhile the manga finishes with plot threads still left unanswered. Why did the manga antagonist hypnotise Eri into loving Goto and vice versa? Why did he hate the teacher as well, enough to try and drop a brick on her? Whatever happened to the secretary? We don't know.
*END OF SPOILER SECTION*

I know I've slammed the manga quite a bit but there are some saving graces. For one the art and panelling are great, really bringing home the noir atmosphere present in the Tokyo nightlife. In some respects I may have liked the manga more had I not been aware of the film. The manga has a slower pace, and characters spend most of their time brooding or ruminating alone, or talking with one another whilst at bars drinking. This is why it is 8 volumes long, when if you were to cut the fat it would probably be 6. I can value this as a creative decision, but it just doesn't hold a candle to the films faster pace, wicked action and infinitely more engrossing plot.

The film essentially took the pieces of what could be a great story from the manga and made a phenomenal one out of it. I would still read the manga as it has aspects to appreciate, but the film will ultimately always be the better depiction.

Yknow I really really wanted to like this old skool manga so much because I was looking for the damn movie everywhere and it wasn’t on Netflix and I heard a few anitubers talk about it. The opening were promising, with a man trying to find out why he was imprisoned by the mafia in an odd room and why he was set free? The man was actually treated nicely as well as the Mafia giving him 1000 yen. He then meets a girl from a noodle shop and the two hit off. That's where I began to lose interest in the story; I ... mean, personally, I'd prefer if the romance wasn't so fast-paced because I felt like there were a few plot holes here and there. Okay, we know about Goto, the main character trying to find his identity’s but the author didn't devote much time to the other characters, especially the love interest, who appears in one scene and then vanishes, and vice versa. It just got boring for me to continue after reading 30 chapters of the story.

Sorry to the Old Boy fan club but this ain’t for me chaps unfortunately!