Written and Illustrated by Tomozo & Yusuke Kozaki
Tokyopop, 192 pp.
Rating: 18+

Sidelined by an injury after years on the battlefield, war photographer Saiga Tatsumi is forced to pay the bills with Tokyo paprazzo work instead. But something is stirring among the city’s elite, and with the body count rising, it seems like something sinister is afoot involving “Club Roppongi”, an elite society promising to fulfill any human desire. Propelled onward by a mysterious pin and his own curiosity, Saiga discovers the club to be something else entirely- a bloodthirsty cult with a human goddess whose touch transforms him into the legendary Speed Grapher.

It’s a Japanese comic book. About a guy. Whose camera blows things up. Once you get over the initial absurdity of the premise, Speed Grapher is just another tired exercise in seinen formula replete with the usual pitfalls. The story opens in a dizzying mess of names, toughness, and carnage, a trick supposedly designed to throw one right into the action but one that, more often then not, simply ends up confusing the reader. With its breakneck pacing and quickie character introductions, there’s a sense that Speed Grapher probably made for much finer television than action comic.

Leading tough guy Saiga adds little to the mix; he’s the standard seinen hero, with enough sense to appear clever and a skeleton of steel to keep him intact through the myriad of explosions and fight sequences. The award of “most trite character”, however, goes to the living goddess, who becomes the obligatory young girl sidekick when Saiga makes a run for it with her in tow. There’s little to get excited about when it comes to villains either, as all safely fill the usual roles of wine-drinking, high-vantage-point-observing powerhouses with little personality to speak of.

With so much of the volume dedicated to extended action sequences, it’s a good thing Tomozo Kozaki knows how to keep things frantic but clear. The occasional well-rendered character pose or detailed background adds to an overall sense of detail and reality, a nice bonus in a genre notoriously hindered by unclear or over-toned brawls. This being seinen, the tone spectrum hovers consistently between “black” and “almost black”, but decent paneling keeps the reading flow natural.

Seinen fans seeking sustenance between volumes may want to give Speed Grapher a try, but most will find the first installment a frustratingly banal retread of things they’ve already seen. Speed Grapher is more or less another overblown, under-explained exercise in Tough Characters Using Lots of Important Sounding Proper Nouns. Most manga readers have seen this one before; why, then, pay ten dollars for the same old story on newer paper?

Volume one of Speed Grapher is available now.