Feb 27, 2020
"Women are like noodles, they become more soggy as they age"
Sunzuku no Teiô revolves around Jintaro Dokusuguri, a money-lender that might as well be a yakuza, known in the whole Shinjuku district for his overinflated ego and his outbreaks of violence. If there’s one thing he likes above all, it’s women and he doesn’t hesitate to use of his position to have sex with any of them he finds to be hot enough or even to use brute force to satisfy his carnal desires. Each chapter follows him trying to fuck different women: a nun, a high schooler, a school teacher. And…that’s’ pretty much
...
it, there isn’t really anything else would make it entertaining except seeing if the characters has any limit he would not cross. While you could think following a cruel character that doesn’t have any morals could be interesting, it doesn’t really do anything with its concept and it only makes the scenario repetitive if not completely boring, it tries its best to be offensive and provocative but ends up just being lame and a bit of a chore to read.
There is some attempt around the last chapters to give more nuances to Jintaro by presenting his origins and his inferiority complex that led him to be this despicable but they don’t really do much and his “tragic” backstory feels more like a hamfisted plotline than anything.
Originally, Jintaro Dokugusuri appeared as the villain in several of Georges Akiyama stories he published previously, first in Kudokiya Jô in 1986 as the rival of the main character. Acting like a sort of spin-off to his other works, it’s probably one of the reasons why this particular story is disappointing to someone not knowledgeable of them as I can imagine it could provide decent fanservice to someone who would’ve already seen Jintaro develop as a full-fledged character and get a different impression of him.
From what I gathered, the story behind him is that Akiyama wanted to make him pure evil without a trace of humanity left in him, in opposition with the saying that even the tiniest insect can have feelings. The character continued to appear because he was supposed to be invincible and as Akiyama was drawing him, some feelings started to transpire from him unconsciously. Jintaro was supposed to be a yakuza but was changed to a moneylender later on because he was at the opposite of their society regulated by strict codes of honor, sworn to not bother the common people. Jintaro is more of the arrogant and violent type, sitting in his Lincoln and bringing women in it in broad daylight to fuck them, definitely not trying to use of his charm or to be a gentleman.
He has a strong accent from the country side and always had an ill-formed face to make him look like a real bad guy, some of his features taken from previous works like his round eyebrows that come from Zankoku Baby published in 1971. Georges Akiyama admits that his face probably comes from a villain from a gekiga or from an old magazine that was lying around and not being the kind of man to take his time to think things through or paying attention to details. Some other small things to note is that he borrowed a catchphrase from Mohamed Ali “Who am I? What’s my name?” to reinforce his cocky side and has him sing “Mayonaka no Dandy” from Keisuke Kuwata at the beginning of the story.
To finish off, I want to say I’m pretty sure Georges Akiyama is a talented artist given his status and popularity in Japan and having glimpsed through his other works, it’s worth getting interested about his career and his bibliography but as one of the only translated works of his (French only), it doesn’t give a good image of him and of what he’s able to do.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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