Manga Review: Orochi the Perfect Edition Vol. 3 by Kazuo Umezz
Quick recap: Orochi is a mysterious, seemingly unageing woman with vaguely-defined supernatural abilities. She wanders around Japan observing bizarre occurrences in humans’ lives, and sometimes interfering in them. As of yet, we know nothing of her own past or why she does what she does, beyond curiosity and moments of compassion.
“Stage” is the first of two stories in this volume. When Yuichi is three years old, his father is killed trying to save him from a hit and run driver. Yuichi identifies the culprit as “the Morning Man”, actor Shingo Tanabe, star of “Good Morning, Children.” Despite the grownups thinking that Yuichi might have mistaken this familiar figure for someone who looks similar, they investigate.
Mr. Tanabe turns out to have a history of driving recklessly and has no alibi for the time of the accident. Plus he’s kind of a flashy jerk in person. Despite Yuichi’s dramatic testimony, the judge finds him an unreliable witness, and there’s no direct evidence against Tanabe, so he’s freed. Tanabe claims he didn’t kill Yuichi’s father, but cops to not having the best personal life and retires to his home village to start over.
Yuichi refuses to shut up about the “Morning Man” long after everyone else has gotten sick of his obsession, and turns from a TV-loving toddler to a television-hating child. In elementary school, however, Yuichi suddenly becomes obsessed with new hit singer Hideji Hanada, and himself decides to become a singer.
Yuichi lies about having an uncle in Tokyo who will host him for high school, but his actual plan is to become the apprentice of Hideji Hanada and…that would be telling.
Orochi doesn’t use any of her powers during this story except not aging and just happening to arrive to witness important events. At this point, it appears that most of her stories overlap in time, with the various important events happening between those of other tales.
A bit more comedically in the middle of the story, we learn that a reality show to find “rising young talent” is in fact scripted, with the winner decided in advance.
Yuichi’s revenge plan is twisted and Jacobean in nature; while avenging his father might seem a reasonable motive, his willingness to ruin lives of people who have done nothing to him but be in the way is chilling. And is his revenge really for his father? It’s a striking story that raises uncomfortable questions.
“Combat” is the story of Tadashi Okabe and his father. Mr. Okabe is a teacher at the junior high school Tadashi attends, and is an unusually kind and forbearing man. Most people find Mr. Okabe a good man, a virtuous man, but Tadashi alternates between admiration and irritation at his father’s peaceful behavior. Sometimes his charity is outright embarrassing.
A mysterious disabled man approaches Tadashi several times, asking him to carry messages to his father. The boy finds this creepy, and neglects to do so. He starts noticing that his father has nightmares and moments when he doesn’t quite act himself.
Finally, the disabled man manages to corner Tadashi and reveal his past with Mr. Okabe. It has to do with their time at Guadalcanal during World War Two and what they were forced to do to survive. It’s a disturbing tale.
Orochi uses her powers to invade Mr. Okabe’s dreams and get partial confirmation of what happened.
Tadashi doesn’t talk to his father about what he’s learned, but instead avoids him, no longer trusting him as a human being. Then an incident happens that traps him and some classmates in a cave for several hours. The other boys lie about what happened, casting him as a villain. Mr. Okabe is fooled by the rumors.
Now that father and son both no longer trust each other, it might be a bad time to go mountain climbing together. The ending is ambiguous.
This is amazingly strong stuff for a comic book aimed at teenage boys, and sensitive readers might want to skip this one as the backstory goes into detail about how the soldiers became “beasts.”
The art remains excellent, and these are both impressive stories in different ways. Recommended to horror fans, especially those who read the first two volumes.
