Alive: The Final Evolution, Vol. 1

Story by Tadashi Kawashima, Art by Adachitoka
Del Rey, 208 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

Alive © 2003 Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka / KODANSHA LTD. All rights reserved.

The opening pages of Alive: The Final Evolution irresistibly reminded me of these famous lines from War of the Worlds:

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

In just three panels, we learn that someone—or something—has detected life on Earth, and has descended to the planet’s surface with an unknown—and presumably sinister—purpose. The result of this… invasion? infiltration? visit? quickly becomes apparent. Nearly 100,000 people from all walks of life—young and old, Eastern and Western, anonymous and famous, healthy and sick—commit suicide over the course of one week, leading scientists to speculate that a heretofore undiscovered virus is sweeping the globe.

Though the crisis is clearly international, the story focuses on three Tokyo teenagers: Taisuke Kano, an angry, reckless outsider; Yuichi Hirose, Kano’s childhood friend; and Megumi Ochiai, a tomboy with a painfully obvious crush on Kano. Kano is small and scrappy, with a Texas-sized chip on his shoulder and a disdain for authority that’s matched only by his fierce loyalty to the timid Hirose, who’s the frequent object of bullying. (In fact, when we first meet Hirose, a group of thugs are shaking him down for his lunch money.) At considerable cost to his reputation and physical well-being, Kano defends Hirose from their school’s alpha teens—that is, until the rash of suicides begins. Kano and Ochiai stumble across what appears to be a grisly mass suicide on the school’s roof, with Hirose as the sole, blood-soaked survivor. Ever the loyal friend, Kano sets out to exonerate Hirose from suspicion of wrongdoing. But as he tries to piece together what happened on the roof, he’s forced to confront the unsettling possibility that Hirose responded differently to the “virus” than its other victims.

What makes Alive such a page-turner is Kawashima and Adachitoka’s restraint. I could easily imagine a more straightforward approach to the material in which we see government agencies dispatching military forces and putting their best minds to work on the problem (or at least noticing something fishy lurking in a low Earth orbit). But Kawashima and Adachitoka have mastered one of sci-fi’s most important lessons: an unseen menace is much, much scarier than an obvious opponent. By not showing us who or what is causing the mass suicides, they create a deliciously creepy atmosphere; we know only that whatever the agent of destruction—virus, parasite, hypnotic suggestion—it is lethally efficient. The victims’ serene smiles and cheerful demeanors in the moments before their deaths enhances our sense of dread.

Much as I enjoyed volume one, I had a few minor reservations. For reasons unknown, Kawashima tosses in an icky (and mercifully under-developed) storyline suggesting that Kano harbors incestuous feelings for his older sister Yoko. I think it’s meant to suggest how closely they bonded after their parents died in a car accident, but it does nothing to advance the main storyline or flesh out the characters. I also found the dialogue clunky in places—Ochiai, for example, excuses herself from a discussion to hang out with Kano, cheerfully telling her gal pals that she’s “off to see [her] childhood buddy you guys were just talking about.” (It’s a bit like my husband telling me he’s “off to work at the investment bank where I’ve been employed for these last five years.”) On the whole, however, I found Alive to be a suspenseful, entertaining read that mixed teen angst and X-Files paranoia to good effect, and will be tuning in for the next installment.

This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. Volume one of Alive: The Final Evolution will be released on July 31st.