Let's cap off this month with another 1960s gekika title, albeit one focusing on people fighting crime instead of committing them.
WILD 7 (Wairudo Sebun), by Mikiya Mochizuki. First published in 1969 and first published in North America in 2002.
PLOT:
Sometimes, there are criminals that the police cannot handle. They commit the most horrendous crimes, but they rely on loopholes, lawyers, and the basic decency of the cops to slip out of the grasp of the law. In those cases, the only solution is to bring in Wild 7. They are a gang of former criminals and societal outcasts, who are feared by the criminal underbelly and loathed by the everyday cops they outrank. They have been deputized by the government to bring in the worst of the worst by any means possible - dead or alive.
STORY:
Moreso than something like Lupin III, this feels like the product of the gekiga era. Wild 7 trades a lot on both the pulpy, bloody action and the edgy, anti-authoritarian sentiment that gekiga relied upon. What Wild 7 didn't take from those comics was its introspective streak. I guess that has to be expected for as series that ran in a shonen magazine, but without it the whole thing just feels like a posturing macho power fantasy.
It certainly has no nuance when it comes to its cast. The villains are all brutish gangsters, confident in their muscle and their ability to scheme and pay their way out of trouble. The police are all hapless bureaucrats who can only yell in frustration at their inability to solve these crimes and how these Wild 7 kids outrank them. The only exception to this rule is a humble middle-aged detective who shows up in the last third, who is seemingly the only person brave enough to go undercover to catch the criminals in the act and put his own life on the line.
Meanwhile, the Wild 7 themselves are a bunch of cocky young assholes who mock pretty much every adult they meet. Mind you, the only one of them thus far who is treated like an actual character is their leader Hiba. Even then, he mostly just feels like a knock-off of the title character of Ashita no Joe, right down to his flashback being mostly set in juvenile prison. Yet so many people keep going off about how he operates on his own moral code and thus how brave and noble he is. I can't say I see the charm myself.
The story structure of this first volume is also kind of weird. There's an introductory chapter where we get to see the Wild 7 in action. Then it veers off for a couple chapters for a flashback all about Hiba and how Wild 7 was founded in the first place. Then it comes back for a scheme where Hiba has to go solo to confront a gangster via a deadly game of Hot Potato. I certainly hope that things straighten out narratively as it goes along and that we learn more about the other members of Wild 7, but it doesn't make for the most straightforward introduction.
ART:
I may not be impressed with Mochizuki as a storyteller, but his talent for art is self-evident. There's a lot of action in this volume, between the motorcycle chase at the beginning, the motorcycle prison break midway through, and the many hand-to-hand fights scattered throughout, and it's all exquisitely rendered with rich inking, dynamic poses, and page layouts that keep the energy of the fights and chases going without sacrificing the clarity of the panel flow. Again, it's very pulpy but it's absolutely the sort of style this sort of story demands.
It does contrast strangely with the character designs though. Most of the good guys either look like cartoon squiggles or rejects from Chargeman Ken, while the bad guys are just a collection of random goons. They're not a complete mismatch to the largely realistic backgrounds and gritty tone, but they never quite comfortably fit either.
RATING:
This series was published by ComicsOne. This series is complete in Japan with 48 volumes available. 6 volumes were published and are currently out of print.
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