Merry Month of Manga: SMUGGLER

 And now we switch gears hard, going from a sensitive and accomplished coming-of-age drama to a messy seinen crime story.

SMUGGLER, by Shohei Manabe.  First published in 2000 and first published in North America in 2006.

                                               

PLOT:

Kinuta didn't meant to end up in the Yakuza.  He wanted to be an actor.  Then he got into some financial trouble, which led to him meeting the worst sorts of people and getting himself deeper in trouble.  Now he's stuck dumping bodies, bereft of any purpose in his life.  Things only get worse when a couple of Chinese assassins take out his boss.  His gang manage to capture one of the assassins, but Kinuta accidentally lets him escape.  Kinuta must take the assassin's place to hide his failure, but the longer the deception goes on the more he loses himself in the role.

STORY:

Smuggler is kind of a narrative mess, one that's barely been cleaned up by volume's end.  You could argue that this was purposeful on Manabe's part as a reflection of Kinuta's life and mindset, but I don't entirely buy it.  Hell, it's hard to tell at first that Kinuta is even supposed to be the protagonist until the halfway point.  He's almost always with a couple of other thugs before then, barely speaking a word while the mangaka cuts away to the perspectives of his boss, the assassins, or various other associates.  Even then, it's only Kinuta who gets any sort of perspective or development.  Mostly this story is just a showcase for Kinuta and everyone else around him to cut, punch, and mutilate others as they see fit.  The ending does bring Kinuta some sense of satisfaction but not enough to offset all the dreariness that came before.

There's a couple of side stories afterwards, but they are utterly inconsequential.  One is a prequel of Kinuta's early days in the Yakuza, while the other is about some goober stuck on a date with a hostess and her crass friend.  They cross paths with a street gang which leads to him beating them all up.  Much like everything else here, the action is by and large the point, but there's no sense of purpose, joy, or energy to anything that happens in this book.  It's one long, dark, grim grind, cover to cover.

ART:

Manabe is clearly going for the gritty, realistic style that's so often seen in seinen manga like this, but he doesn't quite pull it off.  First of all, most of the characters look alike.  Once you've seen one short-haired, beady-eyed gang member in this book, you've pretty much seen them all and it makes it very hard to keep track of who's who.  Worst still, they tend to go off-model with shocking regularity as faces seem to melt and features tend to drift across characters' faces.  More care is put into the bloody fights.  People are gouged, cut, broken and bruised in bloody fashion, spraying out in dark hatches across the page.  There's definitely claustrophobic quality to the paneling which adds to the mood of the piece (if not the clarity).

PRESENTATION:

The only remotely attractive thing about this book is the cover for the One Peace release.  It's certainly an improvement over the older Tokyopop release, which adds dank filters to make its otherwise colorful collage darker in tone.  Although I've not had a chance to check out that Tokyopop version, I would not be surprised to learn that the translation was improved by One Peace as well (even if there are a couple of typos here and there).  

RATING:

Smuggler is a muddy, joyless slog.  Unless you really love dark tales of underground criminals being just the worst, this will likely just confuse and bore you in equal measure.

This book was published by One Peace Books, and formerly by Tokyopop.  Both editions are currently out of print.