Seraphim 266613336 Wings
“Seraphim… my bastard child. Yeah, that’s not finished either.”
That quote is from the final chapter of Satoshi Kon’s “Opus” as the author remarks on his other unfinished manga series, which was written by none other than Mamoru Oshii, director of the first “Ghost in the Shell” anime. Editor extraordinaire Carl Horn was considering using that line as the pull quote on the back cover of this English edition of “Seraphim.” Instead, he went with the more conventional “Two of Anime’s greatest directors once made a manga together,” and also brought up the incomplete nature of this volume in the text. While “Opus” wasn’t complete either, the fact that everyone is upfront about it in this series and the fact that it ends at a reasonable stopping point make it easier to appreciate the potential this series had.
The world of “Seraphim” is one that is quickly running out of hope. A plague that first steals its victim’s mind with hallucinations before turning their bodies into ossified angels has emerged in Eurasia and decimated the continent. While a cordon sanitaire has been placed over the continent by the World Health Organization, there is no telling how long such a measure will contain the epidemic. There is also the mystery of the girl Sera, who was found close to where the outbreak began and has not aged a day in the years since. The WHO, which has taken on a pseudo-spiritual authority in the time since the plague began, has now ordered a group of three to take Sera inside the cordon to see if this crisis can be averted, or find out if mankind’s end has come at last.
“Seraphim” contains a very lengthy afterword by Horn which is basically a series of essays about the manga, Japanese fandom at the time of its publication, ruminations on his own history, and discussion of the aspects of the manga which relate to China. I’ll come back to it later, but the one thing I wanted to bring up right away is that this manga was basically doomed from the start and it’s basically a small miracle that enough was made to compile into a single volume. Why was it doomed? Well, it was published in the anime magazine Animage after the previous long-running manga it had serialized reached its conclusion. That manga was “Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.”
Now, after you’ve just published Hayao Miyazaki’s only long-form manga (and the greatest comic ever made as far as I’m concerned), the only way to go from there is downhill. The editors at Animage clearly had the right idea in getting Oshii and Kon to work on this as a stylistic departure from “Nausicaa” was absolutely essential to distinguish any manga that followed in its wake. While Oshii was highly respected for his work on “Urusei Yatsura” and “Patlabor” at the time — “Seraphim” was published from ‘94 to ‘95, just before “GitS” came out — Kon was also appreciated for his manga work as well. I’m sure it seemed like a pairing that could work to the Animage editors, but you had one great anime director working with someone who would go on to be a great anime director. The fact that there were creative differences between the two seems inevitable in hindsight, and that it has remained unfinished should not surprise anyone.
Which is too bad because what’s here is quite good. While I haven’t seen his recent live-action “Patlabor” revival, Oshii’s work in recent years has been more existential and less focused — as if he tried with “Ghost in the Shell 2” and “The Sky Crawlers” to find some way back to the inscrutable murk of his early (and favorite) work “Angel’s Egg.” Even though “Seraphim” has plenty of the writer’s hallmarks in the form of angel imagery, a basset hound with a prominent role, and lots of birds, the storytelling is grounded and accessible. The scope and seriousness of the threat is well established early on while the mystery behind it is addressed in an engaging manner. While not every aspect of this world is fleshed out as well as it could’ve been, there are enough details to it that make it a compelling setting.
The characters are also an interesting bunch as well. Though Sera is basically a walking MacGuffin, her guardians have taken the names of the three Magi by order of the WHO. (What, you thought I was kidding about the who “pseudo-spiritual” stuff?) Yakob is “Mechior” and also known as “The Country Killer” for reasons which are only alluded to here. He’s the skeptic of the bunch while Professor Erasmus is “Balthazar,” the person closest to Sera, and the one true believer in the idea that she can end the plague. “Caspar” is a basset hound who can also be a goddamn killing machine when he wants.
Of the three, Yakob is first amongst equals in development as the challenges presented to his skepticism and bitter outlook put him on the road to being the most well-rounded by the volume’s end. There are also other memorable characters, such as Ye Xuanying, the head of the special economic zone in China that serves as the gateway into the cordon. He provides the Chinese perspective on all this madness, while also providing a welcome surprise when we find out where his loyalties really lie. You’ve also got the nameless female guide, who shows herself to be the most capable of the cast when the bullets start flying.
They don’t fly very often, but when they do the results are quite impressive. Kon may have made his mark on film, yet he was still no slouch when it came to drawing manga. He takes after his mentor, Katsuhiro Otomo, in his realistic detail-intensive style. This means that the decay of this world in its rural and urban environments comes through in a haunting fashion on the page.
This is all followed up by the lengthy afterword from Horn, which is almost too much of a good thing. While I love his footnotes to each volume of “The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service,” I was really only engaged through about two-thirds of his writing here. That would be where he talks about the background of Animage and Japanese fan culture, and his analysis of the world of “Seraphim” itself. These parts are quite illuminating and filled with interesting anecdotes, like the time Horn took Animage editor Hideo Ogata around town in a borrowed Benz when he was sixteen. Less interesting, for me at least, was all of his talk about China which felt more like a dry history and cultural lesson even as it relates to the world of “Seraphim.”
A compelling world at that. Though I feared that the unfinished nature of this series would leave me unsatisfied, that turned out not to be the case. Oshii and Kon set up a fascinating story that had the potential for greatness. Unless Oshii decides to revive it himself it’s unlikely we’ll ever see that potential fulfilled in the future. Yet it’s here on the page, and perfectly preserved with a final narrative image that suggests its cast is going on to even greater drama. Ultimately, I’m fine with letting my imagination wonder about what that entails.