Dogsred vol. 2

Rou Shirakawa may have competed in his first hockey game under duress, but it turned out to be an exciting experience that has now got him hooked on the sport.  Which is why he heads out with his one-time teammates to see the Oinokami high school team take on their rivals in Sameoh for the national high school hockey championship.  Oinokami has won this for the past nineteen years, so everyone’s viewing this latest match as a simple formality before they hit the big two-zero.  Regardless of how the match goes, Rou knows that this team takes hockey seriously and he wants to do everything he can to be a part of it.  Even if it means taking part in the brutal training devised by Coach Nihei that’s determined to weed out anyone who doesn’t take the sport as seriously as he does.

Two volumes in and “Dogsred” hasn’t revealed itself to be a breakout success, as it gets by on mangaka Satoru Noda’s ability to energize familiar sports tropes rather than subvert them.  That includes speedrunning through the Oinokami/Sameoh game in order to set up what will likely be the driving narrative hook of the series going forward.  Anyone who’s read a story like this knows how the match is going to turn out, so I can at least appreciate Noda’s efforts to make it as exciting as possible while not lingering on any of its obvious developments.

Things do pick up after we get past that match, as we get a moment that genuinely surprised me:  The reveal of why Rou caused the big scene that got him kicked out of figure skating in the first volume.  It’s a solid enough reason that only suffers because it requires to tell us a lot of information about the characters that hasn’t been revealed yet.  So it’s something that makes sense from a purely logical perspective, but not a development that will leave you deeply affected by it.  Still, I appreciate Noda for not dragging this out and it sets up a rift between Rou and his sister that could wind up being more dramatically fulfilling in the long run.

Following a few earthquake-centric chapters, the rest of the volume focuses on Rou’s training as he and his teammates try to join Oinokami’s hockey team as first-year students.  Nihei’s methods of whipping the new kids into shape are almost comically (and sometimes actually) over-the-top, with Rou on hand to provide the expected pushback as the skilled newcomer to the sport.  It’s decently entertaining stuff, enlivened by Noda’s oddball sense of humor that even involves a waterboarding joke at one point.  As well as the return of one of “Golden Kamuy’s” signature elements at the end of the volume to make you wonder how much worse training is going to get for Rou and everyone else.