Gigant vol. 1

If there’s one thing that mangaka Hiroya Oku does well, it’s that he’s got a real knack for conveying action on the page.  Even when it felt like “Gantz” was going off the rails, the action scenes were still compelling.  His follow-up series “Inuyashiki” did have some decent moments of android-on-human and android-on-android fighting, but it wasn’t the focus of the series.  Oku was too busy telling the kids to get off his damn lawn during the rest of it.  Now we’ve got his newest title, “Gigant,” which is relatively action-free for its first volume.  While this should give the mangaka a chance to show off the character and storytelling parts of his skillset, vol. 1 doesn’t really do that.

I know that Oku is capable of creating interesting characters.  He may have completely whiffed it in “Inuyashiki,” delivering co-protagonists that were explicitly and boringly marked as either good or evil, but “Gantz” had a pretty memorable cast that I actually hoped would survive the experience.  Chief among them being protagonist Kei Kurono, who started off as the model of a selfish teenager before developing some empathy for those around him and turning into a great team leader.

The thing is that Kei’s change took a while to happen — around nine volumes.  Fortunately there were other, more likeable cast members to root for before he stopped being a dick.  There was also the title’s central hook of how recently dead humans were being revived and press-ganged into alien hunting to really hold your interest.  And to give Oku a chance to show off those aforementioned action skills.

“Gigant” doesn’t really have any of that going for it as of yet.  This first volume reads like Oku took a bunch of disparate story threads that he was interested in and mashed them all together to make a new series.  Initially, it looks like it’s going to be about Rei Yokoyamada and his struggles as a teenager to not fail his classes, fulfill his dream of becoming a real filmmaker, and to keep collecting the latest works from his favorite porn star PaPiCo.

It’s that last item that becomes most relevant to the plot as Rei finds out that PaPiCo lives in his neighborhood.  First through the town’s local BBS, and then through a series of posters that were put up to proclaim that fact and that she’ll sleep with anyone who asks.  Rei is upset by this, so he takes it upon himself to go and trash all of these posters.  It’s while he’s doing this that he runs into PaPiCo herself.

Before you start thinking that this series is going to head into wish fulfillment territory, it winds up getting a change in perspective and considerably weirder.  That’s because the focus shifts to PaPiCo — real name Chiho Johansson — and her lot in life.  While her career looks to be on the upswing, she’s saddled with a possessive and abusive boyfriend, and a family that clearly resents her job but is more than happy to take her money.  Then one day she winds up at the scene of a hit-and-run, where the victim puts a mysterious disc on her arm as his dying act.

At first Chiho is worried about how this could affect her career.  Then she finds out what it can do:  Allow her to grow gigantic at will.  That’s right, Chiho has become the ultimate size queen.  While this seems like it should have all sorts of creative applications at her job, Oku only devotes a few pages to that.  Instead, it looks like the focus of the series is going to be on stranger things such as the mysterious blu-ray that the hit-and-run victim was carrying and an online poll that produces real-world results.  Oh, and the relationship between Chiho and Rei as well.

It’s way too early to see if the weird stuff is going to go anywhere interesting.  As for things between Chiho and Rei, well, it doesn’t seem like Oku is going to have them hook up but I don’t think we can rule that out yet.  It still reads like wish fulfillment as neither character is given much to do besides exposit about the plot when they’re together.  The lack of chemistry between them means that things like how Rei recommends “Gantz” and “Inuyashiki” to Chiho come off as grating rather than cute.

Chiho is at least sketched out better than Rei over the course of the first volume.  That latter couldn’t be more of a reader stand-in given his overall lack of personality.  Chiho has more character to her, even if said character is made up entirely of stock elements.  Of course her boyfriend is an abusive jerk, why wouldn’t he be?  Naturally Chiho’s family would look down on her career, is there some reason that someone who works in the sex industry shouldn’t be looked down upon?  Granted, Kei from “Gantz” came from a similarly stock background and grew into something interesting.  The thing is it took him while to do it — almost the entire length of “Inuyashiki’s” ten-volume run.

That’s basically what it comes down to here.  Do you have faith that Oku is going to go somewhere interesting with these initially bland characters and the quaint weirdness that surrounds them?  I’m honestly on the fence about this as there’s nothing aggressively awful about this first volume that would get me to stop reading it.  If anything, the overall “meh” level of quality delivered by “Inuyashiki” is what’s inspiring my lack of confidence.  More than anything I wish that this was coming out under publisher Seven Seas’ “Ghost Ship” imprint, which is home to all of their fanservice-centric titles.  Then I’d know that there was no hope for “Gigant” rising above its initial impression.