Kurogane, Vol. 2

By Kei Toume
Del Rey, 249 pp.

At first glance, Kurogane seems like yet another series about a ronin with a violent past. Reading volume one, however, we quickly realize that manga-ka Kei Toume is indebted to Frankenstein as much as Vagabond for his characters and plot twists. The series opens with Genkichi, an eccentric inventor, social pariah, and former samurai, stumbling across our hero’s mangled body. Recognizing him as the famously lethal assassin Jintetsu, Genkichi salvages Jintetsu’s remains for an experiment in reanimation, resurrecting the young man’s soul in an indestructible steel frame. Jintetsu then returns to the village of his birth, only to discover that you can’t go home again—at least not when you’re sporting a new body and a talking sword.

Volume two follows Jintetsu as he renounces his old life for the open road, settling into a formula familiar from dozens of samurai stories. Ronin crosses paths with an assortment of types—a roguish but honorable assassin, a noble blind girl (who just happens to be a performer), a tough young girl posing as a boy—in desperate need of his skills and courage; mayhem, swordplay, and redemption ensue.

Though other characters comment on Jintetsu’s “steel mask” (or note that “gee, you seem different”), I was both baffled and amused that none of them notice that (a) his sword does all the talking and (b) he’s a robot. My bigger complaint about Kurogane, however, is the occasional clumsiness of the exposition. Toume’s characters lapse into conversations that are meant to illuminate their connection to Jintetsu but sound quite unnatural, i.e. “I’m 7 years older than you and used to live next to your family. Since you didn’t have a mother, I often took care of you.”

Narrative griping aside, there is much to like about Kurogane. Jintetsu is a marvelous creation, with a big gash of stitches across his face, a forelock that conceals a missing eye, and a working eye that is a window into his angry, tormented soul. Toume’s other characters are equally distinctive, with some of the most expressive faces I’ve seen in manga. Whether intentional or accidental, most of Kurogane’s female characters bear a strong resemblance to Otsuki, the girl that Jintetsu leaves behind in Volume 1; the resemblance adds resonance to his interactions with several women in Volume 2.

My real beef with Kurogane lies not with Toume’s storytelling or artwork, but with Del Rey’s sometimes sloppy print job: on several pages, the bottom panels have been unceremoniously cropped mid-image. Dialogue, too, occasionally disappears into the binding, rendering several passages unreadable. Still, it’s difficult not to praise Del Rey for the overall quality of the product, from the gorgeous cover artwork to the fluid translation. The notes are handled well, with essential phrases and names explained in the margins of the book and less important terms covered in the appendix. And for connoisseurs of sound effects, Del Rey offers the best of both worlds: the pows! and splats! appear both in their original Japanese form and in translation in a tiny but legible typeface.

If you’re planning to read Kurogane—and I highly recommend that you do—I would encourage you to read both volumes. Yes, the stories in Volume 2 are largely self-contained, but you’ll truly appreciate the poignancy of Toume’s Frankensamurai conceit if you read the very first chapter of the series, “Dead Man Reborn.” Mary Shelley would undoubtedly approve.

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