By Osamu Tezuka
Digital Manga Publishing, 514 pp.
Rating: 16+

Set in the early 60s, Swallowing the Earth is the story of a group of sisters carrying out their revenge against humanity for how their poorly mother was treated. How do they go about doing it? By altering their appearance so that their beauty drives men mad, by making money useless, and by bring society’s morals crashing down around its ears.

This is a strange, strange book. It starts off as a story of obsession, with a WWII vet named Adachigahara sending his friend’s son Gohanmatsu, a homeless drunk, to investigate an impossibly beautiful woman named Zephyrus. Gohanmatsu proves to be the only man able to withstand Zephyrus’ beauty, and escapes her again and again even as men of wealth and power fall prey. But it’s not really a story about impossible beauty corrupting men. After we learn Zephyrus’ sad past, the story moves on to look at the social impact of a very realistic synthetic skin. The skin makes the largest impact in America, where it appears in the middle of the Civil Rights movement and… well, erases the color line by having everyone dress up in white skin (yes, this is just as shocking as it sounds). In addition to simultaneously fixing and worsening race relations, the synthetic skin also raises crime rates, since people need not fear their faces being recognized while they commit a crime. From here, the story then moves on to destroying monetary systems, and then moves back to Gohanmatsu and his relationships with Zephyrus and the sisters of the south seas.

There are hints from the beginning about the direction and themes of the story. Fairly early on, Gohanmatsu is stranded on an island where there is no money or social structure, and the community is a very tightly-knit one (and also entirely cannibalistic, a detail that is presented and then neither commented on nor followed up). This group is quite happy with their situation, and doesn’t understand when Gohanmatsu tries to explain monetary systems to them. Gohanmatsu himself is the perfect hero for a story focusing on the evils of society like this one, since he takes no pleasure in carnal or material desires, the things that Zephyrus preys on, and is actually quite happy living as a homeless man with his father. These themes are also reinforced in Zephyrus’ backstory, which reiterates that greed and lies of the heart are terrible things, especially in times of war.

But it’s hard to see where the story is going as it unfolds, and Zephyrus’ plans don’t actually click into place until near the end of the book. It makes for a truly interesting read, because the meanderings are frequently… well, insane and sometimes seem tangential. For instance, Zephyrus toys with men at the beginning of the story, taking them into her bed and giving them cause to duel and destroy one another. But Gohanmatsu reveals that she’s not actually sleeping with the men, only giving them LSD in their drinks and then watching as they roll around with a sex doll. Gohanmatsu is almost always at the center of these types of plot developments, and the story is a lot better for it since he doesn’t ever seem to grasp or comment on things like… I don’t know, someone landing on a remote island in a small Cessna in the middle of a hurricane in order to kill him, or being forced to strip gold jewelry out of a pit full of mummies.

Gohanmatsu, as completely uninterested as he seems in the affairs of men, is also heroic in his way. He frequently beats groups of henchmen up, Popeye-like, after imbibing drink in order to save them from being killed or captured. But his heroics seem reserved for individuals rather than as society as a whole. He recognizes the vices that Zephyrus is exploiting, and although he seems to think what she is doing is evil, he does little to actively stop her once he gets himself untangled from his sticky situations. Strangely, his alcohol habit is never questioned and is not viewed as a vice or a negative quality in the context of the story.

Also worth noting is the fact that greed, though it takes over and destroys in the end, isn’t really portrayed as a negative quality at all save in Zephyrus’ past. Most of the bad things we see happen are as a result of desire, but the desire is usually a more abstract thing. There are big businessmen, but they attend to their own affairs and take opportunities Zephyrus gives them rather than tripping because they are too greedy. And although all of them want Zephyrus, this very rarely seems to interfere with their work.

Despite its fascinating approach to telling the story and the themes that are not fully realized until the end, Swallowing the Earth is a clear transition between Tezuka’s serial stories for young audiences like Astro Boy and Dororo and cohesive, dark stories like MW and Ode to Kirihito. The meandering plot, while interesting, is evidence of this, since it seems to lose and change focus several times throughout the course of the book. The parts of the story showing the vices of artificial skin in society are told through several chapter-length oneshot stories unrelated to the plot and characters which, again, while interesting, feel very disjointed. The beginning of the story seems to have very little to do with the actual plot, and the strange post-apocalyptic ending is not what you would expect as the outcome of Zephyrus’ plan, even when you finally grasp what she was aiming for. The “coda” section at the very end is also a bit of a bizarre mystery.

Despite the clear weaknesses, it’s still a very, very worthwhile read. Gohanmatsu is one of the most interesting main characters you’re likely to come across, and the trippy, meandering plot is perfect for taking advantage of his quirks. A lot of Tezuka’s stories feel like obligation reads, old stories that are full of good stuff and worth reading, but not all that fun to read. But this one fits with Black Jack and Ode to Kirihito as something that’s held its entertainment value perfectly through the years.

Swallowing the Earth is available now.