Review: BOMBER GIRL

Of course, not every series that runs in Jump can be a success.  Sometimes series fail, and fail quickly.  This is one of the few examples of such to see print in English.

BOMBER GIRL (Bonba Garu), by Makoto Niwano.  First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

In a future Tokyo overrun with crime, bounty hunters compete to bring down the worst criminals with the biggest bounties.  The most notorious of them all is Rashomon Emi, a 19-year-old bombshell known for her custom tonfa sticks and her vicious, no-hold-barred attacks.  Time and time again she and her hapless neighbor/fellow bounty hunter Guy find themselves facing down the outrageous agents of Megalith, a band of terrorists determined to take over Tokyo and remold it in their own image.

STORY:

I can see what Niwano was going for here.  He probably had dreams of creating some wild, sexy action blockbuster of a manga, one that appealed to all the teenage impulses he himself ever had and his audience (presumably) still possessed.  He would coast on its success all the way to animation and an inevitable merchandising blitz that would make rich and famous.

There's just one problem: Bomber Girl isn't fun to read.

Emi is clearly meant to be a Strong Independent Woman as it was understood by total hacks in the 1990s - that is, just the same as your standard male action hero but with boobs.  As such, she's written to be hard, reckless, and cocky.  She's also written to be something of a bimbo, vain, greedy and dumb.  What's missing from her is any quality that makes her interesting, fun, or even vaguely sympathetic.  She's an obnoxious asshole to everyone she meets, friend or foe, and she makes money not just from her bounties but from extorting the victims afterward.  We're simply supposed to excuse her actions because she's hot, and clearly that was not enough for readers then or now.

It's also clear that Niwano doesn't really have any idea what to do with her after the first few chapters.  Thus he keeps shoving in wacky new characters until the series races towards its hasty end, all of them serving as little more than punchlines to Emi's antics.  As a final insult, the last chapter ends with a cliffhanger, as Emi squares off against the leader of Megalith himself.  I can't tell whether this was one last attempt at a joke on Niwano's part or proof of how hastily this series was cancelled.  Either way, it's the kiss of death for a bunch of loud, fatuous nonsense.

ART:

Niwano's art combines the crudeness of an inexperienced artist with some of the worst excesses of 90s manga art.  You've got the sharp-angled faces, big round eyes, and heavy reliance on super-deformed reactions for comedy.  There's also a heavy reliance on fanservice, as Emi (and occasionally others) flop their boobs and flash their panties for the sake of spectacle and comedy in equal measure.

Yet there's something off about all of it.  The faces are just a little too crude, the figures just a little too stiff.  He also leans hard on explosions and speed-lines for the action, often to the point of obscuring the art (at least, when it isn't busy ogling Emi).  It's just a very amateur work, one that's trying far too hard to be cheeky and zany for its own good.

RATING:


Bomber Girl is quite simply a bomb.  Dated, irritating, and ugly, it's easy to see why this was cancelled so swiftly (in spite of Niwano's later attempts to reboot it with a different publisher).  What's harder to explain is why anyone thought releasing it here a decade later was a good idea.

This book was published by Raijin Comics.  It is currently out of print.