Junk: Record of the Last Hero, Vols. 3-6

By Kia Asamiya
Published by DrMaster
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

What are we to make of Junk? Is it the story of a young man whose journey into adulthood is complicated by a device granting him great power? That appeared to be the case in Junk volumes one and two, but in volumes three through six, more super-humans and subsidiary characters are introduced, resulting in a muddled story. The next volume promises to either tie up some loose ends, or make readers ponder further why they continue picking up the series.

Summarizing volumes three through six: Ryoko, the secret crush of Junk’s main protagonist Hiro, gets kidnapped. He uses the Black Junk to rescue her, but not everything goes as planned. Afterward, Ryoko, who had been treated as an important part of writer/artist Kia Asamiya’s overall story, gets written out along with Mr. Tsujidou, the counselor Hiro’s parents hired. They are subsequently replaced by a hot-blooded blonde who beds Hiro immediately, and a cute high schooler named Ayo.

Other new characters include a female anchorwoman, two additional Junks, and a cult seeking the government’s overthrow. The cult’s scheme involves recruiting and brainwashing high school students, who will get their parents to join, leading to the adults’ recruitment and brainwashing. No, Mr. Evil Mastermind, there’s nothing wrong with your plan, because if the average teenager is anything, it’s communicative towards their parents.

The previous paragraph may sound like griping, but it illustrates my main problem with Junk: there seems to be a lot haphazardly tossed in and only half thought out, as if Asamiya were making up the story as he went along. To be fair, he apparently suffered an illness shortly after volume three, delaying volume four’s release and possibly allowing him time to rethink the plot. How else to explain the long stretches in which Hiro barely changes into the Black Junk, or the constant deus ex machinas moving the story along artificially?

For example, in volume four of Junk, Asamiya sets up a potentially-interesting scenario: Hiro, enraged after the media publishes dirt on his kidnapped girlfriend’s home life – specifically, his affair with Ryoko’s mother – wages a campaign of destruction against them as the Black Junk. It satisfies his sense of payback, but leads to Hiro being interrogated by police, who have been trying to crack the case of all the various Junks.

Instead of figuring out how Hiro could get himself out of this predicament, or actually having the cops arrest him for his crimes (now THAT would have been interesting), Asamiya introduces a new Black Junk, which immediately gives Hiro an alibi. In fact, an annoying trend of Junk is to bring in more super-humans whenever Asamiya paints himself into a corner. Volume four introduces the Red Junk, which is even more advanced than Black or White Junk, and worn by a psychopath who hires himself out as an assassin.

How to stop him? Will Black and White Junk team up, proving two version 2.0 Junks trump one version 3.0 model? Asamiya could have done that, but instead, he introduces the even more powerful Blue Junk to resolve matters. At this point, I’m junked out, but half-anticipating the Gold Junk, who can level Japan’s major cities with one punch.

On the bright side, the art keeps getting better with each successive volume, and Asamiya clearly knows how to entertain his male audience, providing many shots of attractive eyes, lips and legs, and well-endowed female forms viewed from flattering angles. Hiro probably shouldn’t be getting lucky as often as he does, and he, like the series, is starting to show fatigue from all the action.

Volumes three through six of Junk are available now.