Wild Adapter Volume 1
Registered by 
GoryDetails
of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 6/29/2012
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
GoryDetails of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 6/29/2012 This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
I picked up this manga at The Comic Store on one of their manga-sale Tuesdays. The artwork caught my eye at once - it's by the creator of the Saiyuki series, and the character on the cover looks a LOT like Hakkai... This sounds like a darker story (which is saying something), with drugs and angst and assassins. Will have to see!
Later: Definitely dark, and yet our hero, the enigmatic Kubota, seems to be free of strong feelings in any direction, so whether he's committing cold-blooded murder (admittedly, under circumstances where the victim was going to be killed anyway) or is mourning a dead stray cat, he seems... distant, and oddly light-hearted.
In this volume he's tapped by a crime organization to take over as a group leader, and agrees to it seemingly for want of anything better to do. At first he earns the enmity of Komiya, the gang member who had been next in line for the position and who resents the upstart, but gradually Komiya comes to respect his skills and, eventually, to develop a powerful and touching personal loyalty to him.
But life in a gang is never easy or safe, and when our heroes run up against a mysterious drug that causes its users to mutate into beastlike forms and then die in ghastly, bloody fashion, things change a LOT. Kubota suffers a personal loss, takes massive vengeance, and then -at the very end of the book - adopts a "stray cat" in the form of a young man with one beast-like hand, suggesting that he may be a survivor of the "Wild Adapter" drug, though for how long we don't know.
I really enjoyed the artwork and storyline here, even though the body count and general setup suggests a lot of suffering in store for the main characters (and the secondary ones too, for that matter).
[There's a TV Tropes page about the series that may be of interest.]
See also Volume Two.
Later: Definitely dark, and yet our hero, the enigmatic Kubota, seems to be free of strong feelings in any direction, so whether he's committing cold-blooded murder (admittedly, under circumstances where the victim was going to be killed anyway) or is mourning a dead stray cat, he seems... distant, and oddly light-hearted.
In this volume he's tapped by a crime organization to take over as a group leader, and agrees to it seemingly for want of anything better to do. At first he earns the enmity of Komiya, the gang member who had been next in line for the position and who resents the upstart, but gradually Komiya comes to respect his skills and, eventually, to develop a powerful and touching personal loyalty to him.
But life in a gang is never easy or safe, and when our heroes run up against a mysterious drug that causes its users to mutate into beastlike forms and then die in ghastly, bloody fashion, things change a LOT. Kubota suffers a personal loss, takes massive vengeance, and then -at the very end of the book - adopts a "stray cat" in the form of a young man with one beast-like hand, suggesting that he may be a survivor of the "Wild Adapter" drug, though for how long we don't know.
I really enjoyed the artwork and storyline here, even though the body count and general setup suggests a lot of suffering in store for the main characters (and the secondary ones too, for that matter).
[There's a TV Tropes page about the series that may be of interest.]
See also Volume Two.
Journal Entry 2 by GoryDetails at Hannaford Supermarket Charity Sale Bookshelf in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Saturday, April 26, 2014
GoryDetails at Hannaford Supermarket Charity Sale Bookshelf in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Saturday, April 26, 2014
Released 9 yrs ago (4/26/2014 UTC) at Hannaford Supermarket Charity Sale Bookshelf in Nashua, New Hampshire USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
I plan to donate this book to the charity-sale shelves inside Hannaford's at around 4:45 or so. [They sell donated books for low prices, with the proceeds going to benefit various charities.] Hope the buyer enjoys the book!
*** Released for the 2014 Into the Wild release challenge. ***
*** Released for the 2014 Into the Wild release challenge. ***
