Ajin: Demi-Human vol. 6

With this volume, mangaka Gamon Sakurai continues his efforts to yank the narrative in the direction he wants it to go.  Frankly, I was hoping we were going to get a series about a charismatic psychopath (Sato) who is out to murder those in the government, military, and big business who wanted to exploit his kind and the idiot kid (Kei) who stands against him because of FRIENDSHIP!  There’s an outside chance that could still happen, but it looks like we’re getting a story about a sullen, unlikeable kid whose life experience has taught him to look out for number one (Kei) and a psychopath who is advancing his own agenda under the guise of social justice (Sato).

That’s the storyline which is advanced in the first half of this volume as Kei and his fellow demi-human Ko train with Tosaki and his crew and work on a plan to take down Sato.  There are some interesting bits with the always fun Dr. Ogura as the two male demi-humans in this group learn more about their abilities, while the doctor learns a thing or two as well.  Probably the most interesting part in this section is where one of the older men tells Kei that he doesn’t have to change and that it’s okay to remain a bastard.  That kind of advice goes against convention for this kind of story, which dictates that Kei will eventually come to appreciate those around him.  Which is why we likely won’t see it followed up on in any meaningful fashion down the road.

However, there is a section in this volume which gives me hope.  At the very least it demonstrates that Sakurai can tell a story that doesn’t require an action sequence to hold your attention.  It involves the backstory of Izumi Shimomura, the female demi-human who has been working with Tosaki since the beginning.  She used to be a hard-working schoolgirl who was saving up enough to move out of the apartment she shared with her passive mother and mom’s deadbeat boyfriend.  Everything was going to plan until Mr. Deadbeat decided that he wanted to get some girls one night.

Izumi’s isn’t a very happy story.  It’s also one that hits you in the gut with the bad things that happen to her one after another.  That being said, I was completely immersed in it from the start in spite of its faults and obvious ending.  Sakurai’s art does an excellent job of conveying Izumi’s emotions over the course of the story, making it really easy to empathize with her struggle.  Even the small-scale violence is gripping here, and while her “resurrection” in the hospital was easy to see coming, the fact that her appearance prior to that is only intimated in visuals focusing on her eyes ultimately gives the moment a satisfying payoff.  This section may be predictable, but it’s straightforwardly engaging in a way that the main story hasn’t really managed.

Then we go off on a less interesting tangent for the final chapter of this volume as we’re introduced to Takeshi Kotobuki, a prisoner who managed to escape his prison without a trace before returning two days later.  The staff are eager to cover it up and pretend that it never happened, but word gets around and one of the other inmates starts hassling Takeshi for the secret of his escape.  Though the temporary escapee doesn’t have any friends on the inside, readers probably won’t be surprised when the one familiar face in the prison decides to stand up for him.  I know I wasn’t.

The return of this familiar face isn’t the big surprise that it should’ve been.  Mainly because I didn’t care for him all that much when he first showed up and I could’ve gone the rest of the series without seeing him again.  Now that he’s back, his path is destined to cross with Kei’s again and he’s got “Going to die in order to motivate the protagonist,” written all over him in bigger font than Ko does.  Unless this guy turns out to be a demi-human as well, which would just be ridiculous given how many we have in the main cast already.  As for the story itself, it’s just as predictable as this series has been so far.  At least the reveal of the unique ability of Takeshi’s demi-human form is handled nicely in a double-page spread.

In case the popularity of this series wasn’t clear from the announcement of an anime movie trilogy a few months back, an anime TV series has been green-lit as well.  I’m not sure why they’re doing that, unless the movies are going to be the “uncensored, compressed” story of the series and the TV series is going to be the “censored, decompressed” version.  Can’t say I’d be interested in checking out both to see what they wound up with.  That said, I’d welcome any tweaking or improvisation the creators of the anime projects bring to the storyline of “Ajin” because while it’s a readable series, there’s a lot of room for improvement there.