Inuyashiki

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Writing a review for Inuyashiki is hard because my feelings for the story have warped so much since the days I first began reading it a few years ago. It starts out so strong and ends up spiraling out of control midway focusing too much on what I essentially consider "despair porn" chapters and moments.

What drew me into this series was the idea of an elderly protagonist. It's rare in manga to see something like this, as many writers tend to gravitate towards highschool students to try and appeal to their target demographic. Instead what we got was a fascinating view of the life of ... a humble, modest man nearing the end of his life, and how he copes with protecting his family and dealing with the idea of having new alien robotic abilities. Through his actions we see him question what it means to be truly human or alive. Coming to the aid of innocent people in order to feel any sense of life and to convince himself that even after the accident, he still has a human conscience.

Another character in Inuyashiki begins to undo the niceties of our protagonist in chapters I previously described as just being despair porn. The story begins to focus less on what it means to be alive and the introspective of personal morality, and more about how many innocent people can we show being brutally murdered to try and nail in the fact this guy is a bad dude. I wont mention the characters name due to spoilers but it's frustrating to see an actually interesting character being overshadowed by another generic highschool student who listened to one too many linkin park albums.

The artist Hiroya Oku has a very distinct and expressive art style to his work. However a lot of his backgrounds tend to look like photographs he just filtered to look drawn. Apparently this is a style unique to him and some are okay with it. I however thought at times it looked very jarring. It also took a lot of the enjoyment out of double panel pages.

Overall I would give this a soft recommendation. If you're like me desperately trying to filter your way through the piles of generic cookie cutter manga then I wont lie and say this is what you've been looking for. But the chapters that revolved around Inuyashiki were always a good read. It's a shame this manga ended on such a dull predictable note, but there's definitely some chapters I'd consider a 9/10 near the start.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

The thing about this manga is that it started out pretty interesting.

We have Inuyashiki, a man who hasn't aged as well as you'd hoped. Burdened by the responsibility of being the main breadwinner of the family, a wife who is no longer affectionate with him, a daughter who introduces him as her ''grandpa'' because she's ashamed of how he looks and a son who harbors resentment towards his father because he's being bullied at school (i.e. bullies take his lunch money and pick on him because he doesn’t have enough of it. Though his father is unaware of what his son is dealing ... with), has left this family man an awkward, shivering and borderline anxious mess. But despite how unfavorable his family treats him, he still loves them very much.

One day, Inuyashiki is diagnosed with stomach cancer and whatever light he still had in his life, quickly went out once he realized he wouldn't be able to be there for his family anymore. Naturally, he had to tell his family about his dire situation, but their continued blatant disregard kept Inuyashiki from sharing the news; too afraid to have confirmed that they wouldn't care whether he lived or died. In tears, Inuyashiki ran away from home and that's where our story picks up pace.

Caught in an explosion from an alien invasion together with the charming young high schooler, Shishigama, Inuyashiki's and Shishigama's human bodies are destroyed. The aliens, realizing that they had just killed two people and might have a war on their hands if anyone found out, tried to fix their mistakes by putting them back together. But without any human flesh left, they were forced to transform them into machines.

Inuyashiki decides to use his new found abilities for the greater good. Shishigama decides to use his powers for evil. You might think this would end up in an interesting clash between a unconventional old superhero and a charming young villain, while Inuyashiki attempts to also retain his humanity and live up to be the husband and father his family might love. And perhaps we might also get to learn about these suspicious aliens that suddenly showed up on earth.

But you're only half right. That's what the story was going for. Most of the story is dedicated to showing us the good things Inuyashiki has done and the bad things Shishigama has done. And don't get me wrong, that was pretty interesting to read about. We get to see how saving people gives meaning to Inuyashiki’s life, and with the old guy being treated pretty unfairly at home, you can’t help but feel for him and smile when you see how fulfilling his life has become. On the other hand, you get to see Shishigama’s warped and downright psychopathic tendencies; killing for the heck of it, and yet he still loves his mother and later on a high school girl. But what had seemed like a solid story line, quickly changed course. We were almost supposed to feel sorry for Shishigama because everyone found out that he had gone on a crazy killing spree, simply because his mother ended up taking her own life after she found out that her son was a mass murderer. He became an outcast and wandered around, running from the police and not doing anything worth mentioning. When he fell in love with the high school girl, I was left to wonder what Shishigama’s deal was. Why did he like killing people, but was he able to fall in love so quickly at the same time? What drove him exactly, what was the reasoning behind his actions? Sometimes you’d see him cry in grief over losing his mother, be a good and kind friend to one of his closest friends and treat the girl he likes with love—and all of that was genuine. And yet, he could also indiscriminately murder hundreds of people—and for what? I didn’t understand the balance. I could never grasp how both of those opposing feelings could live side by side inside of him without any reasoning. What exactly drove Shishigama? We never find out.

The clash between Inuyashiki and Shishigama was anti-climactic too. It was wrapped up quickly and Shishigama was once more left to wander the world, and finally decided to save the planet alongside Inuyashiki, because the girl he loved and his good friend were still there.

Which brings me to another point. The way this story ended.

Donald Trump—yes, you read that right, Donald motherfucking Trump—shows up nearing the end of the story, calling Shishigama the greatest terrorist ever. And the next time Trump shows up, he’s talking about how a meteorite is about to fall on the earth and wipe out the entire civilization so now everyone is free to rape, steal and kill whoever they want (don’t get me wrong, Trump is crazy as hell and I don't like him, but was that really necessary to put inside this story?).

And yes, you read that right. Donald Trump called for the purge.

I’m confused as well.

So I thought, hey, maybe that part was put in there to show us how quickly people change when all rules are stripped from them? Will this turn into a philosophical question? With the veil of standards and morals stripped away, are people actually that warped inside? Leaving you to wonder whether Shishigama was really that crazy compared to the rest of the human population.

But none of that was ever explained. Again. Seriously. Inuyashiki and Shishigama end up saving the day in the way every tragic hero does (and apparently in Shishigama’s case, unexplained evil guy who does something good for once?) and the story ends. Everyone just goes back to their daily lives in the span of about 5 chapters nearing the end. We don’t get to find out anything about the aliens, we don’t get to understand Shishigama, we don’t get to see Trump ranting about Shishigama on his twitter, but hey, at least Inuyashiki’s family ended up giving him the love and respect he had always deserved... except for the rest of humanity. From being known as a godlike superhero with videos of him healing people everywhere, people sure forgot about Inuyashiki quickly.

I have to give props to the art, though. It was very detailed. Very beautifully done. Though it seems opinions vary on this matter. I personally enjoyed how realistic it looked and the details that had been put in the background scenes. Well, to each their own, I suppose. But all in all, what started off interesting and had a good plot line, wasn’t executed very well and ended as though the author had ran out of ideas.

Hiroya Oku's follow-up to Gantz continues his exploration of nihilism in a hyper-real Japan, with an enticing premise and promising protagonist. There's not enough older folk utilised as main characters in manga, and Oku relishes the chance to shove Mr Inuyashiki into excruciating scenarios and to pull him out in cathartic fashion. He's joined by a malevolent antagonist who has a heavy presence all throughout the tale.

Which is a problem. But more about that later. Let me get some positives out of the way.

Oku really nails the banal cruelty of internet comments that you see everywhere online, from 2chan to reddit to MAL itself. We ... saw this in Gantz, and he continues his skewering of 21st century online discourse to entertaining effect here.

I sometimes see people complain about the backgrounds in his manga, because they seem traced, but the realistic backgrounds serve to immerse you in the story that feels very familiar, despite all the outrageous shit going on. When the antagonist of this story goes on a killing spree, it's all the more horrific to witness when it's set against mundane realistic backgrounds.

The antagonist is so menacing, so obscene in his nonchalant method of dealing death to everyone around him, that Oku himself becomes mesmerised by him, sacrificing the protagonist of his own story. Mr Inuyashiki is relegated to the background at a certain point and becomes super passive, even disappearing entirely from the narrative.

Oku establishes some rules to how technology works in this story, how Mr Inuyashiki can hear people in trouble. And yet, during one of the many shocking massacres in the story, for some baffling reason, Oku decides not to include the protagonist in the ensuing sequence. There is no in-universe reason for why our elderly protagonist would not have heard the cries of dozens of people being shot to death, and rushed to do something about it. But for whatever reason, Mr Inuyashiki is not involved at all.

Mr Inuyashiki himself is sorely missing for a substantial portion of this manga and it's infuriating.

So much mayhem happens, so much misery, and the entire time you'll be wanting to scream at the manga "where the hell is the protagonist?". The antagonist is so fascinating, it makes you wonder if Oku should have made the entire story about him to begin with. To have a tale about an antihero, like Light Yagami, up against the world, to see his rise and fall.

Anyway, at some point Oku remembers his protagonist and gets him involved again, but his passivity never really goes away, he has to be pushed by exterior circumstances or people in order to do anything remotely meaningful. The last half of the manga is disaster porn, populated by useless characters doing nonsensical things within repetitive and inefficient panels. It's like Oku forgot how to be a mangaka.

The climax of the story is also insulting and without coherent thematic meaning.

Inuyashiki is unfortunately a narrative failure and a disappointing follow-up to Oku's magnum opus Gantz.