Manga Review: Wild 7 Vols. 1-4 by Mikiya Mochizuki
In the late 1960s, Japan was faced with a rising crime wave. Student radicals, terrorists, gangsters, corrupt politicians; it seemed all too much for the ordinary police to handle. Police Supervisor Katsu Kusanami, a brilliant rising star from a top university, had an idea. What if there was a special police unit that didn’t have to bother with niceties like “evidence” and “due process”? He spent some time recruiting “ex”-criminals with special talents for this new unit, the Wild 7.
As the name suggests, there are seven men in this elite unit. Hiba, a former juvenile delinquent and escape genius who now works as a reporter, is the leader. Hippy Tom (Japanese name Hebopi) was a Vietnam War protester wanted by the U.S. military for sabotage, and is the group’s strongman. Otto (Japanese name Hapyaku) was a baseball pitcher expelled for fixing games with his hypnotic talents, and currently works as a golf instructor. Don (Japanese name Oyabun) is a “retired” Yakuza boss. Backfire (Japanese name Ryougoku) is an explosives expert and former safecracker who works for a fireworks company. Sekai is a circus acrobat who trained the others in fancy motorcycle riding, and Chashu is a ramen chef and martial artist with a particularly hard head.
With their specially rigged motorcycles, these men fight the crime that ordinary police can’t or won’t handle. They are the Wild 7!
In this first volume, we are introduced to the Wild 7 as they catch up to some gold bullion thieves. The thieves initially aren’t too worried because Japanese cops have to follow rules which give the thieves an advantage. What follows is a horror show from the criminals’ perspective, as the Wild 7 use tactics that are brutal even by American police standards. Most of the robbers end up dead. Their leader is dumped on the local cops by Hiba like a trophy, along with the stolen gold. (Minus a “finder’s fee.”)
Shortly thereafter, the police are forced to free murderous mobster Ooiwa as the evidence against him has vanished and a court order has been issued. Ooiwa belongs to a shadowy organization that has much power within the government, but not enough power that they can operate openly.
Hiba meets with Kusanami at Von, a coffee shop that is the unofficial headquarters of the Wild 7. The shop is run by Iko, who has a bit of a crush on Hiba but won’t quite admit it, and her bratty little sister Shinobu. Kusanami gives Hiba a solo mission to assassinate Ooiwa, whose day job is president of M.C. Productions, an entertainment company that trains actors…but mostly are hitmen.
The mission is complicated by the fact that the local police chief has disguised himself as a janitor to infiltrate Ooiwa’s office and been caught. Ooiwa gets to not be dead by Hiba deciding to disobey orders and instead take the mobster alive for questioning, but thanks to crooked lawyer Tooi, Ooiwa has a new destination!
Ooiwa gets away to M.C. Production’s main office, which is in fact a booby-trapped fortress. Kusanami is infuriated by Hiba’s disobedience and orders the Wild 7 mobilized. But first Hiba goes off to rescue the police chief, which also allows him to be “captured” and brought inside the fortress.
There’s supposed to be a squadron of riot cops backing up the attempt to arrest Ooiwa, but they’ve been drawn away by a phony student riot. (The riot is real, but the rioters aren’t actually students.) And the shadowy organization’s pet politicians will keep the riot cops away long enough to suppress the charges against Ooiwa.
Hiba manages to execute Ooiwa, but that just puts Tooi in charge of the building and its high-tech defenses. The rest of the Wild 7 arrive and manage to do some damage to the building, But then political pressure forces Kusanami to order them to assist the riot police at the student demonstration. Naturally, the Wild 7 disobey this order to rescue Hiba and stop the mobsters.
But Tooi is not found among those dead or captured, and Kusanami is furious about the continued flouting of his orders.
A few days later, Kusanami has called the Wild 7 together but he and Otto are missing. Then they arrive, Kusanami supporting the gravely injured Otto. The former baseball player spins a tale of being attacked by seven armored “knights” on motorcycles. Kusanami orders the Wild 7 to be prepared to battle these knights.
Hiba is suspicious as pieces of Otto’s story don’t hang together. The knights are very real, but the end of the story is wrong–Hiba realizes that Kusanami had Otto lie about parts of what happened!
Since this is fiction, Hiba is handed a piece of the case on his job as a reporter. He’s assigned to do a piece on a new fad sport, kick-wrestling, which combines kickboxing with professional wrestling. The training camp just happens to be near the scene of the knight attack. When Hiba investigates, the foreign thugs who make up the majority of the kick-wrestlers are eager to demonstrate their art on him. It turns out that owners of independent TV stations are being lured to the camp and “persuaded” to carry the kick-wrestling program. Otto was attacked because he happened to be nearby when one of those persuasions went too far.
Meanwhile, the police hospital where Otto is being treated turns out to be run by the shadowy organization, so he’s not allowed to communicate and his life is in danger! Through a trick, he’s able to get a message out to Iko, who heads up to the training camp.
She misses Hiba, who’s waiting at a rest stop for Backfire to bring his Wild 7 gear, and winds up accidentally spilling the message to Tooi, the crooked lawyer. Naturally, she’s captured.and forced to don a panther skin. This forces Hiba into a cruel battle against what he thinks is an actual panther. (His skills do not include zoology or he would have noticed the legs bending wrong.)
In the confusion, Tooi manages to escape and set a trap that apparently kills Hiba; most of the kick-wrestlers also avoid capture. We learn that one of Tooi’s superiors is a high government official codenamed “the Shadow.”
At the end of the volume, we learn that the kick-wrestling show was only the tip of the iceberg. The shadowy organization is creating a television network that will show lowest-common-denominator programming to lure in the masses, then fill their minds with propaganda. The goal is to get more of their puppet politicians into the Diet; once the shadowy organization has the majority of seats, they’ll be able to openly control Japan! The man in charge of this media blitz is Kuromatsu.
At the very end of the volume, Backfire reports to Kusanami, only to find his leader in conference with that very Kuromatsu!
Even though it appears that Kusanami is cooperating with Kuromatsu, he does tell Backfire where Otto is. The Wild 7 arrive just in time to save Otto and get him to a shady but non-mobster doctor, and capture Kuromatsu. Hiba also turns up alive and reveals the trick that saved him.
While Otto is recovering, the Wild 7 take Kuromatsu to an abandoned construction site and question him. Too bad the motorcycle knights have tracked them down, and a battle royale ensues. Many of the knights are defeated, but Kuromatsu escapes, and Kusanami orders the Wild 7 to stand down.
It’s soon learned that Kuromatsu is going to appear at a debut party for his media network, New Empire TV, held at the Hotel T in Karuizawa. Still down Otto, the Wild 7 decide to attack the villain there. But it won’t be easy!
Many celebrities and legitimate politicians will be there in addition to members of the shadowy organization, so they’re surrounded by police protection. Worse, Kusanami has a secret connection to Kuromatsu which forces him to not oppose the man, so he strips Wild 7 of their police powers! Can our heroes accomplish their mission with the odds so high against them?
The violent vigilante cop who doesn’t have to follow the rules that protect criminals is a perennially popular media character (see also Dirty Harry), but is especially alluring in times of high crime and expansion of rules to protect citizens. Naturally, crooks will exploit laws meant to protect the innocent, but anyone who’s ever been the target of police officers who don’t follow the rules will tell you those cops aren’t the heroes.
Which is why in vigilante stories, our heroes’ targets are always super obviously guilty and often outright cacklingly evil. Which is fine, as long as we recognize the political undercurrents.
That said, this is a fine example of the subgenre. These are hard men making the hard choices, and although they might have committed crimes, they still have a strong sense of right and wrong. Those that we get flashbacks for in these volumes have interesting backstories. The villains have suitably evil plans and reasons why the regular police can’t act, and the action scenes are exciting.
There are some gaps in logic–Kusanami really should have figured out that gathering seven men who have problems with obeying authorities and then expecting them to obey his authority without question was going to result in a lot of disobedience.
Some readers might find the 1960s art style offputting and old-fashioned, but the motorcycles are all specific real life (if modified) models that are lovingly drawn.
As the one important grown woman in the series, Iko is mostly eye candy and damsel in distress material–the panther skin scenes may make some readers uncomfortable.
The ComicsOne edition I read was printed early in the translated manga boom, so is flipped to read left to right. This results in everyone being left-handed and there may be some other mirroring issues. I don’t believe they ever completed the series, either.
Recommended to vigilante cop fans.
There have been several adaptations, anime, live-action TV, and this movie:
