We're back with a month of horror manga, and this time let's look at something a little different...and possibly a bit too timely, considering everything that's happened this year.
ALIVE: THE EVOLUTION (Araibu - Saishu Shinkateki Shonen), written by Tadashi Kawashima & art by Adachitoka. First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2007.
PLOT:
Taisuke is an ordinary guy. He lives with his older sister, who also happens to be the school nurse. He regularly rescues his wimpy friend Hirose from bullies. His other friend Megu berates him in your standard tsundere sort of way. This story begins on what would be an ordinary day for all of them...until people start killing themselves en masse due to something known only as the 'suicide virus.' Things only get worse when Hirose is accused of murdering his tormentors. Things get stranger still when Taisuke, Hirose appear to be immune to the virus and start manifesting strange powers.
STORY:
Boy does this story come off differently in 2020. Before then, the notion of a killer virus would have seem as sensational as any monster. Now....not so much. Still, it's a little hard to take this too seriously considering the notion of 'mysterious force compelling people to suicide' bears a bit too much of a resemblance to The Happening.
You can almost feel the writer patting themselves on the back with how clever they are by making the introduction so cliched. You've got orphaned siblings, a snarky older sister, a token tsundere/Childhood Best Friend/Love Interest, a simpering second banana type, all of them played as straight as possible.
Then the extraterrestrial suicide virus shows up and things start getting good, only to go horribly wrong.
The story of Alive is at its best when it embraces the chaos of its scenario. People are dying, there are far more theories than answers as to why they are happening, and our protagonists are simply trying to survive and adjust to a strange new world. You might be saying 'that sounds an awful lot like your average zombie movie' and you would be right. Still, it's a moderately more plausible scenario than a zombie plague and the writing does effectively capture the emotion and confusion of this situation.
Of course, then they all get superpowers and all of that atmosphere dissipates like a fart in the wind. Without the threat of a deadly unknown virus or its death-happy victims, Alive becomes just another half-assed shonen action story and becomes a lot less compelling. At that point, they might as well end it now. I don't know how they dragged this out for so long and I am kind of glad that the planned anime for this died with Studio GONZO.
ART:
I was surprised to see Adachitoka attached to this, a duo of ladies best known these days as the creators of Noragami. There were complaints by other critics back when this was new that their art was too ordinary for such a story. I'd argue otherwise; the story works as well as it does (well, before the superpowers) is because their character designs and backgrounds are so ordinary and unstylized. That said, they were still fairly new artists at this time and it shows in how boring the layout looks. No interesting angles or dramatic panels can be found here, and it ends up undermining a lot of the emotion that Kawashima was going for.
RATING:
I might have been a little kinder to Alive had it not flirted with some good ideas only to discard them shortly thereafter. Sadly, I've seen this style of story done a lot a better and I've definitely seen the artists do better work. It galls me that Moyasimon remains forgotten by Kodansha but this series gets digitally rescued. Life (and manga licensing) is not fair.
This series is published by Kodansha Comics and formerly by Del Ray. This series is complete in Japan with 21 volumes available. 8 physical volumes were released and are currently out of print. All 21 volumes were released digitally and are currently in print.
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