Portus
By Jun Abe
Viz, 226 pp.
Rating: Mature Readers
A high school girl mysteriously commits suicide, leaving behind only one clue: Portus, a videogame that she mentioned shortly before her death. Her best friend, Asami, is determined to get to the bottom of it all, and with the help of two teachers, Keigo and Mayumi, she sets off to discover the secret behind Portus. Sound familiar? It should, as it’s your standard J-Horror ghost story, but instead of a dead wet girl we get a dead dry boy.
If you’ve seen The Ring or just about any other J-Horror dead wet girl movie then you’ll know exactly what to expect from Portus. The main trio are a fairly flimsy and cliched group: the concerned friend, the motherly teacher, the skeptical but helpful ally. Oddly enough, the most throughly developed character in the entire book is the ghost itself. Large chunks of the story are given to explaining its past, showing why it’s angry, and how it’s connected to the game. Sadly though, these scenes aren’t enough to lift Portus out of the generic ghost story category. It’s a very predictable plot, right down to the “hero” moment in which one of the protagonists saves another in a dramatic and timely fashion. Even the message the story tries to convey, two wrongs don’t make a right, is a bit heavy-handed.
Still, there is one high point to Portus: Jun Abe’s art. His linework is surprisingly detailed with a delicate feel. From the skinny Takashi to the chubby, geeky Sugano, the characters look and feel different from each other and even carry themselves differently from one another–no idealized bodies here, even for the young Asami. The detail pays off in the horrific moments of the book as well. The realistic artwork gives the brutal and disturbing moments a bit more oomph. There is one odd scene, however. At one point during a flashback, we see someone get hit in the head with a meat cleaver, but for some reason the image is pixilated out. Why this was done is beyond me, but it really pulled me out of the story; it took me a moment to figure out what had been obscured. It also made no sense, since the next panel shows the cleaver being removed in all its graphic and disturbing detail. Aside from that one nitpick, the artwork is quite elegant.
Overall, Portus is an okay ghost story that has some good moments, but it feels too derivative for its own good. The artwork is definitely the highlight. Abe creates some some lovely visual moments here and there, but sadly, it’s just not special enough to stand out from the crowd of “Dead Wet Girl” movies and stories already out there.
This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. Portus will be released on October 9th.
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