Review: LYCANTHROPE LEO

It's October, which means time for more spooky manga.  I picked this one out hoping to get a neat werewolf story, which is something of a rarity in manga.  What I got was indeed a werewolf story...of a sort.

 LYCANTHROPE LEO (Reo), written by Kengo Kaji with art by Kenji Okamura.  First published in 1991 and first published in North America in 1999.

STORY:

Leo thought he was just another high school kid, doing his best to get through school, do well on the track team, and avoiding his strict father.  It's his father that reveals the truth: Leo is not human.  He is part of the "blood tribe," lycanthropes who can freely transform between human and beast form.  Further more, Leo's father is a member of a league of hunters dedicated to eliminating creatures like Leo.  This revelation triggers Leo's first transformation, who ends up killing his father in self-defense.

Now Leo is being pursued not just by the hunters but by other lycanthropes engaged in a centuries-long power struggle.  All the while, Leo must learn to control his powers and deal with the ramification of his actions.

STORY:

Lycanthrope Leo feels like a shonen manga trying to put on the airs of a seinen manga (at least, by the standards of them both in the early 1990s).  Every new chapter throws another weird idea or two on the metaphorical pile in between the werebeast fights, all of it delivered at a breathless pace.  That's probably for the best because if Kengo Kaji gave his readers even a moment to stop and think about what goes on in this book they'd realize how ridiculous it all is.

There's so much going on in this story.  You've got inhuman beastmen hiding amongst humanity, at least two or three different secret organizations working against one another, loads of bloody fights, and caught up in the middle of it all is poor dumb Leo.  Despite being the title character, he's a fairly passive figure.  He's noble but not very bright, which means he's easily duped by others on a regular basis.  There's also a bit of male wish-fulfilment going on with him.  He's a high school kid who can not only run faster than Olympians and possesses super senses, but he has two different women interested in him.  One is the requisite Childhood Best Friend (who is mostly there to be threatened by others), and the other is a sexy substitute teacher playing the part of the femme fatale.  

It also struggles to figure out what tone to strike.  It's too silly and over-the-top to be as gritty as the art wants it to be, but it's too bloody and intense to be silly.  No matter what's happening, it's always happening as fast and intense as possible, which gets increasingly exhausting with each new chapter.  First impressions are everything in manga, so even if Kaji figures out what kind of tone and pace he wants or how to make Leo a proper character, it's probably going to be too late for most curious readers.

ART:

The art of Lycanthrope Leo has similar issue with what tone to strike.  The character designs are somewhat goofy looking, with many possessing sensitive, wide-eyed faces that remind me of the extremely early chapters of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.  Yet others have the sort of exaggerated features and grimaces that made me think of Baki the Grappler (which would have debuted only a few months before this series).  It's hard to tell whether these observations are purposeful influences on Kenji Okamura or mere coincidence, but it's safe to say that the characters have a look that was consistent with The Style At the Time for shonen manga.

Yet all of it is rendered with the sort of moody inking and heavy hatching that I associate with the hypermasculine, gritty, violent seinen manga of this era.  In fairness, Okamura can make that look work really well.  When things get dark and people start transforming and fighting, that's clearly where he's most comfortable as an artist.  It just doesn't quite mesh with these goofy-looking characters when they're not ten-foot werecreatures picking for a fight.

RATING:

Like the title character, Lycanthrope Leo is caught between two worlds.  It cannot decide whether to be serious or silly in both looks and writing, and this dichotomy leaves it struggling to find its footing (and ultimately, its audience).

This manga was published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  1 volume was released and is currently out of print.