Drifters vol. 3
While we’re still on the subject of Dark Horse Manga, let’s shift gears a bit to talk about another series that we don’t see new volumes of all that often. What separates “Drifters” from “Eden,” however, isn’t that it sells that much worse but that its creator has a terrible work ethic. Mangaka Kohta Hirano rose to international fame with “Hellsing” and the anime that it spawned. That title was serialized very irregularly, but somehow the creator managed to wrap it up after ten volumes. In the case of “Drifters,” it appears that Japan is lucky to get new volumes on an annual basis. That’s a shame as this third volume continues the upward trend that convinced me that this was going to be more than a stylish fantasy hack-and-slash adventure.
In the previous volume we saw how the Drifters, famous or infamous characters from history brought to a fantasy realm by a nondescript man in an endless hallway, rallied the Elvish people into forming a resistance to take on the Kingdom of Orte. That movement picks up steam here as their hardcore samurai leader Shimazu, behind-the-scenes-mastermind Oda Nobunaga, and master archer Yoichi are joined by Abe no Seimei, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Hannibal. The show still belongs to the first three and they continue to remain its most compelling characters. Particularly Nobunaga due to his skill in manipulating people and acumen for repurposing the available resources of the land into more familiar and deadly battlefield technology.
They’re up against the hooded entity known as the Black King who leads the Ends, other travelers from different eras who have their own unique powers. The Black King’s power is the ability to increase life endlessly. Be it in the form of creating enough grain for his goblin army, or turning a dragon’s skin into a cancerous mass. He leads the monsters of the land on their own crusade of genocide to wipe out the humans by uniting them through religion, agriculture and language. So even though the Drifters are raising up their followers in their own way, the Black King provides an equally compelling counterpoint to their efforts.
Still, the most fun to be had here lies in seeing Shimazu and co. tear through the Orte oppressors and the villainous Ends in style. The volume starts off with the wild-and-crazy samurai finishing his one-on-one with a flamethrowing Joan of Arc while the rest of his gang take on a seemingly unkillable Gilles De Rais. There’s real ingenuity displayed in the combat here, and Shimazu’s adherence to his personal code lets his battle wrap up in surprising fashion. Then the action shifts to the countryside as the Drifters fight to free the Elves’ longtime foes, the Dwarves, in order to utilize their smithing skills and we get another wild romp out of it. Even if Shimazu may be a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, he still needs to be guided by Nobunaga’s strategy, even as the latter is confounded by the fact that the former is — as he puts it — a “fool.”
Hirano’s art also does an excellent job of capturing the intensity of the battle. Not only is there an excellent sense of momentum to his fights, but he’s great at drawing characters with crazed expressions. Looking in the eyes of the Drifters and the Ends, it’s clear that they’re not only primed for battle, but that something’s not quite right up there either. It’s mostly thrilling to behold, save for the moments when he slips into his “caricature” style. This usually happens when he wants to emphasize a particular moment for comedic effect, regardless of how jarring such a change in style will wind up coming off compared to the rest of the scene. The end result is that this quirk of Hirano’s winds up breaking your immersion in his manga rather than enhancing it.
Another issue that I’ve noticed before, but has become more noticeable in this third volume, is that this series is one of the most seinen I’ve read in a while. It’s a manga targeted to “young men” in the vein of “Gantz” and “Berserk” and while that’s not a bad thing in itself, you get the feeling that it’s trying a bit too hard to appeal to its target audience. Things like the transvestite characters that become more prominent in the latter half of the volume being obvious jokes is one thing. Then you have the fact that its main female character — the elf sorceress Olminu — may be useful thanks to her rock wall charms, she’s only there to support the main characters, have people talk about her breasts, and suffer Nobunaga’s constant mangling of her name. I’ll admit that I kept chuckling whenever that last bit came up, though I realize it doesn’t reflect well on me at all. Though it has its share of interesting characters, this is not a title you read for its compelling female roles.
Assuming you can get past these things, the third volume of “Drifters” is another wild ride. I loved seeing how the scope of the conflict keeps broadening and how the various Drifters and Ends work to impose their will on this world. You can’t predict how they’re going to change things next, and that only adds to the title’s appeal. Now if only Hirano would get his act together and make it so that we got new volumes on an annual basis at least…