Manga Review: Rose Hip Rose, Vol. 1

Rose Hip Rose, Vol. 1

By Tohru Fujisawa
Tokyopop, 192 pages
Rating: Mature (18 +)

The Tokyo Police handle most of the crimes that plague the city, but every now and then an event arises that requires skills and abilities beyond that of even their own SWAT and hostage rescue groups. When such a thing occurs they call in the woman known only as Rose Hip. Now a brutal serial killer is stalking the streets, and Rose Hip is needed, but as the search for the killer deepens who is the hunter and who is the hunted?

The basic concept behind Rose Hip Rose is a mixed bag. The idea of a highly trained, uber-elite SWAT type is one that sounds fantastic, but a highly trained, uber-SWAT type that’s a sixteen year old girl? On one hand, it’s head-scratchlingy odd and clashes with the contemporary setting; on the other hand, it’s also one that holds the promise of some nice gun play and interesting tactical-oriented action sequences. Unfortunately we don’t really get much of either in the first volume. Nope, instead we end up spending lots of time with our POV character Shohei, and man… is he unlikable.

Shohei has got to be one of the most obnoxious point of view characters ever. When we’re first introduced to him, he’s whining about life and the future while secretly taking photos up school girls skirts for a web site he’s running. It’s not any normal up-skirt site; unlike most, which apparently just post the photos, his site also posts information about the girls and what trains they ride, just in case any one out there felt the need to harass them personally, I guess. Thankfully, he picks the wrong girl finally and ends up losing his camera’s memory card to Rose Hip, here in her disguise of Kasumi Asakura. From that point on, the two keep bumping into each other at school, at an apartment complex–hell, at one point he even tries following her but she gets the drop on him. Throughout this cat-and-mouse game she teases him and calls him a perv, eventually blurting out something about whether he’s trying to save her and how she wants to be a normal teenager annnd… well, that’s when Shohei gets six shades of delusional about his own abilities and sets out to try and save her from whatever horrible fate he’s imaging for her. Yep, he decides to try and save a girl who’s blackmailed him, upstaged him, flipped over oncoming trains and generally been shown to be a capable and badass chica. What he thinks he can actually do that she can’t is anyone’s guess, buy hey… whatever.

While all that is going on, there’s a serial killer plot lurking in the background that finally explodes in some action scene’s in the second half of the book. Unfortunately, these scenes and the resolution to the plot are marred by some plot-inspired stupidity which seems tailored to give Shohei a heroic moment. I just can’t see a SWAT team allowing a suspect to reach into his pocket and pull out a detonator. I mean, really now, have you ever seen how police react if you try to reach for something during a traffic stop? It’s not the kind of thing they take kindly to.

Despite th plot holes, Fujisawa’s art is pretty damn good. While the backgrounds have a tendency to fade in and out, the character artwork is nice enough that you won’t really care. His character designs, especially for Rose’ sexy SWAT gear, are solid and tend fit with the urban contemporary setting of the story with stylistic tweaks here and there. The panel-to-panel flow is smooth and easy to follow, though the action sequence towards the end suffers from a few bumps in the continuity department. In between panels characters who were previously surrounded magically appear to not be surrounded and such. It’s a little jarring but I didn’t pick up on it until the second reading so I suppose the story is engaging enough to get away with little fumbles like that.

It is a mature rated series, and while there are some mutilated corpses kicking around they’re not quite as bad as I’d expected. The gore is portrayed in a less clean and detailed fashion than other notably brutal serial killer stories like MPD Psycho. If you’re not a fan of dismembered corpses, or heads being sliced off, then you still might want to avoid this series, but overall the gore level wasn’t that extreme or copious. The amount of panty shots, on the other hand, is a bit much, but a lot of those come early on thanks to Shohei and his smutty web site.

There are definitely some interesting threads started up here. I’d love to hear about her training and why a single teenage girl is more capable than just about every other highly trained person out there, and judging from the end it seems like they might just get into that! It turns out that she’s called Rose Hip because of a certain tattoo on the inside of her hip, and at the end of the volume, well… someone with another rose tattoo appears. Hopefully bits of her past will be revealed in future volumes with some nice running gun battles to boot. So if you’re looking for a decent action series with some mysteries lurking around the corner, then this might just be a series you’ll want to check out.

Volume one of Rose Hip Rose is available now.