Manga Review: Mars Red Vol. 1 Story by Bun-O Fujisawa, art by Karakara Kemuri
It is 1924, and the Great Kanto Earthquake has hit Tokyo. In the ruins of a lavish performance hall, the star actor awaits death. A girl comes to rescue him, amusing to him as he is a vampire and she a mere human. Sure enough, they’re soon both trapped, until another vampire saves the pair–at least for now. But how did things get to this point?
Several years earlier, the Taisho Era of Japan was in full swing. Progress was being made on many social fronts, the Japanese were absorbing the parts of Western culture they liked, and new technologies were making life interesting. However, military adventurism was taking hold among certain elements of the armed forces and government, and there were increasing incidents of secret violence.
Rookie reporter Shirase Aoi has noticed that several recent corpses attributed to wild dog attacks are concentrated in one part of the city, and no one’s actually seen any wild dogs lately. Indeed, no one has actually seen the killings, suggesting that the perpetrator has at least some intelligence. The police laugh off her silly notions of a human(ish) murderer, as she is both a woman and works for a notorious tabloid.
Shirase, an orphan, became a reporter to uncover the truth. She understandably is suspicious of official denials since the mysterious “death” of her childhood friend Kurusu Shutaro on a mission in Siberia.
She stumbles on a trail of blood, and then runs across some suspicious-acting soldiers. They battle what appear to be vicious vampires, and when Shirase awakens the next morning, she’s told there was a movie shoot at the building last night. Riiight. She overhears a soldier talking about something called “Section Zero.”
We switch to Section Zero’s point of view. It turns out Private Kurusu is not entirely dead. He was one of two soldiers to survive a vampire attack in Siberia (90% of humans die due to incompatibility with vampire biology) and turn into a vampire himself. He was forced to join Section Zero, which fights rogue vampires and studies them to either find a cure or how to replicate them en masse as super-soldiers. The existence of vampires is, of course, a government secret.
Meanwhile, there’s a new very powerful vampire in town, one that likes the spotlight, and seems to be taking a liking to Shirase.
This manga is based on a stage musical, and was essentially done as a test bed for turning the story into an anime. As such, there are many theatrical touches.
One of the big themes is that while vampires become stronger, faster and more durable, they get a number of weaknesses that make it not a particularly good tradeoff. Losing your mind to blood thirst if you don’t get properly fed and burning in sunlight are the two big ones right away. (Religion doesn’t seem to enter in at all, these being biological vampires.) Also, there are variable levels of power given, so Kurusu is top-tier for former humans, while Major Yamagami is barely above human and would lose in a fair fight against almost any other vampire.
Also, there’s an undercurrent of grief. As far as any of the civilians know, the vampire soldiers are dead, and especially Shirase is heartbroken as Kurusu was her last emotional connection to her family.
Since I haven’t seen the anime, I don’t know exactly where this is headed beyond fighting vampires, but the opening tells us that at least three characters make it to 1924.
In the first volume, most of the characters are “types” who need more filling out; Major Yamagami is the most interesting so far because of his very human behavior and concerns. I don’t trust the general who created Section Zero one little bit as his thinking seems to be the sort that got Japan into Manchuria and China and eventually the Pacific War. Plus some folks are likely to have issues with our “heroes” basically being military police black ops.
Content note: Bloody corpses, murder. Period sexism.
It has some appealing points, but I think this one is primarily for people who want the vampire to be the hero of the story.
Here’s a look at the anime opening:
