Wild Adapter, vols. 1-3 (Kazuya Minekura)

As this noir-ish urban tale opens, we see a young man with a strangely furry right hand apparently escaping into the streets of Tokyo. It's perhaps typical of this intriguing but frustrating series that we won't encounter him again until the end of the volume. The scene next shifts to Yokohama, where we meet Makota Kubota, an extremely cool-headed, disaffected young man who isn't attending school or working for a living or doing much of anything except playing mahjong. It's mentioned that he's the bastard son of someone important - the name rang no bells for me - and one of the city's leading detectives is his uncle. His personality and lack of occupation attracts a local Yakuza gang leader, who recruits him to be the head of the gang's youth division.

Kubota's utterly impassive personality is a source of much consternation to a number of people in this underworld community, from young gang members who are offended that this outsider has been placed over them to the prostitutes who are meant to serve as his incentive and reward. But they - and the police - have other things to worry about. Foremost among these is the strange new drug known as Wild Adapter, which has been killing people and leaving the victims with strangely animal-like features. Soon things are going seriously wrong in the gang, and Kubota wants out - but you can't just quit the Yakuza.

This is an odd series. To me, a huge Saiyuki fan, most of the characters look unnervingly like members of the Saiyuki cast. (Kubota, especially, looks like Hakkai's slightly younger brother.) There's almost as such violence as in Saiyuki, but it's played far more seriously. There also isn't much of a plot, thus far: Kubota, eventually accompanied by his strange friend Tokito, wanders about nosing into things that probably ought to be let alone, most of which offer up only tiny clues about the Wild Adapter drug. It may be that like many manga series, it's suffering from a slow start. I miss the camraderie of the Saiyuki boys: Kubota and Tokito can't really carry the whole thing on their skinny shoulders themselves, and although there a couple of other recurring characters, they're definitely not part of the main action.

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