Holiday Review #4: GANNIBAL

For those who wanted horror manga that was a little more recent and gruesome, there were also releases like this one.

GANNIBAL (Gannibaru), by Masaaki Ninomiya.  First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2024.

PLOT:

Officer Daigo Agawa thought he was getting a break when he was assigned to Kuge, a remote village deep in the mountains.  The people there seem friendly enough, even if they constantly tease him for being a newcomer.  Then he finds the gruesome remains of an old woman in the woods, seemingly the victim of a bear but also bearing what appear to be human bite marks.  

From that moment things become tense between Daigo and the many members of the local Goto family.  Daigo can't help but think about his predecessor, who claimed that the village was full of cannibals before disappearing entirely.  He's determined to find the truth, but doing so may put him and his family in terrible danger.

STORY:

Most horror manga revolve around supernatural threats, but not Gannibal.  Gannibal feels much closer to the sort of story you might find in a survival horror game or one of those horror movies about killer hillbillies, where the threat is much more immediate and violent.

The events of Gannibal unfold slowly but purposefully.  It eases you into things alongside Daigo, only for things to escalate in a heartbeat once Granny Goto's body is discovered.  From there the story settles into a steady, almost rhythmic wave of action and tension.  At its peaks he is thrust into dangerous situations as the hunt for a deadly bear, a fake funeral, and a confrontation at the Goto homestead.  All the while, he is quietly conducting his own investigation into his predecessor without alerting the family full of temperamental, super-strong, gun-toting weirdos who seemingly know his every move.

Another way that Gannibal is like a survival horror game is that Daigo is a bit devoid in the personality department.  Daigo isn't a pure self-insert, but he might as well be because I'd be hard-pressed to tell you much about him as a character.  There are hints of interesting plot threads around him, like the tension with his wife and a as-yet unspecified traumatic event that is likely the reason he got sent out to the country and rendered his young daughter mute.  Even then, they serve more as plot devices than characters in their own right, as the volume ends with a cliffhanger as they are taken hostage.  Even the Gotos largely operate more as a mob than as individuals, with the exception of a few.  It makes the book feel more like an experience than a true story and unless later volumes do some course correcting, it could leave the whole thing feeling a bit hollow.

ART:

Masaaki Ninomiya's art is vivid, if nothing else.  He draws everything with thick, rough lines reminiscent of brushwork (or the digital equivalent thereof), and lots of hatching for texture.  When combined in the right fashion it can become downright impressionistic.  This is most readily seen during Daigo's fight with the bear, where the texture of its fur and the lines of its motion seemingly blur together until it looks less like an animal and more like a ball of sheer fury.

The character designs are grungy and down-to-earth, although the thick lines work like eyeliner to make everyone's eyes stand out.  You certainly get a good look at them as Ninomiya tends to favor low-angle, almost fish-eyed reaction shots for moments of shock and terror.  They also mesh quite well with the (largely rotoscoped) backgrounds.  He also doesn't shy away from the gore when needed, although he doesn't get excessive with it.  That being said, the spookiest thing about the manga is the Goto patriarch.  He's a blank-eyed ghoul with the grizzled look of a homeless man, never saying a word but always carrying around or sampling at least a few body parts.  He's almost as feral and dangerous as the bear, but even more dangerous by virtue of his silent movements, human intellect, and a large, dangerous, fanatical cult of a family determined to protect him and their "tradition" at all cost.

PRESENTATION:

The most notable thing about this book's release is how long it took to happen.  This series was crowdfunded, something that's quite a rarity these days thanks to DMP running the racket into the ground back in the 2010s.  It was successful but it was also (inevitably) delayed.  I had actually ordered this book for last year's holiday reviews, but it took until roughly halfway through this year for it to finally show up at my front door.

RATING:

Gannibal is a gruesome thrill ride of a horror manga, one carried more by its premise and artwork than character writing.  At the very least, it serves as a welcome alternative for horror manga fans wanting something different from the endless waves of Junji Ito.

This manga is published by Ablaze Manga.  This series is complete in Japan with 13 volumes available.  1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

There are three weeks left in our Holiday Review Giveaway ! To find out more and potentially win a $25 Bookshop.org gift certificate, click the link above.