MW (2010)

I robbed the bank and killed the guard! Of course I pretended to be Miho, all tied up, and took your ransom money too! Ha ha! Isn't that a hoot?

This is the collection of a manga series from the late 1970s by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka is probably best known for creating Astro Boy among others. This story is a much darker one than those he is more usually associated with.

The book features two main characters: the amoral Michio Yuki who spends the book kidnapping, murdering and sleeping with men and women to use them in his schemes and Father Iwao Garai who is one of Yuki's lovers and who is trying to earn forgiveness for past sins by redeeming Yuki. Their tangled history begins on the island of Okino Mafune when a young Garai is a member of a delinquent gang of youths who kidnap the very young Yuki hoping for a ransom pay out. The pair hole up in a cave high above the island and come down the next day to find that everyone on the island has been killed by the accidental release of a chemical warfare agent called MW. A grown up Yuki blames the MW for altering his brain and causing his amoral behaviour and his crimes target people involved in the cover up of the incident. Eventually he discovers that the deadly gas has been moved from the island to an a foreign military base near Toyko. Yuki is determined in his madness to steal the MW and replicate it so that he can kill the whole world while Garai trying to make up for the past tries to stop him and save his soul.

This book reminds me of the later Deathnote manga. Like it there is a dark premise, a supremely confident villain who imagines himself untouchable and an investigator who is sure of the identity of the perpetrator of the crimes but lacks the proof to bring him to justice. The book examines the complex ties that bind two very different men through a large portion of their lives. From the teenage delinquent turned Catholic priest to the young innocent boy made into a monster by the experiences of one fateful day. It is chilling to be almost charmed by a character who uses his charisma to manipulate both sexes and to inspire devotion so strong that his victims will defend him against the bigger crimes that he is accused of. An excellent read and a story that does hang around too long as some manga can do to their detriment.

First published on RevolutionSF on Friday Jun 08, 2012