IWGP: Ikebukuro West Gate Park, Vols. 1-4

By Ira Ishida
Published by DMP
Rating: Mature (18+)

Who is IWGP intended for? Most likely, male audiences age 18 and above, who like their mystery fiction tinged with sex and violence. There’s a lot of that in the four volumes released so far, and even if IWGP’s macho streak seems a bit much at times, at least writer Ira Ishida keeps things moving at a brisk pace.

Based on a Japanese television drama, which in turn, was based on a novel, IWGP follows a group of urban youths who want to have a good time, but inevitably get embroiled in adventures involving the underworld. The main character is the street-smart Makoto, who at the beginning of volume one rescues a girl named Hikaru from some hoodlums on New Year’s Eve. At the titular Ikebukuro West Gate Park, they hook up with Makoto’s skirt-chasing buddy Masa and Hikaru’s friend Rika. Some wacky supporting characters are also introduced, including an otaku named Shun and Takashi, the dandyish leader of a local street gang.

For a short while, volume one coasts along on the sheer excitement of being young and good-looking. However, just when the reader might start confusing this with some teenage romance manga, Ishida reveals IWGP’s dark side.

Makato and friends live in a world where every pretty face hides some sinister secret, and if that sounds like the jacket blurb for a hard-boiled detective novel, it’s a fitting comparison, since IWGP certainly has crime fiction elements: the tough, cocky protagonist; criminals in supporting roles; bittersweet, if not altogether tragic endings. But at the same time, Ishida conveys a sincere message about how valuable friendships are, and there’s plenty of wacky humor and flashy art by Sena Aritou to balance out the sober codas.

It should be noted, however, that the friendships IWGP values most are those between men, which is consistent with the series’ emphasis on male toughness. Because Shun is the least masculine of Makoto’s group, he is often teased and made fun of. The only woman to break into the male circle is a character named Sachiko, but as it happens, Sachiko, who appears in volume three, underwent gender reassignment and is now as much a skirt-chaser as the other guys.

Generally, women are the reason Makoto and his friends get mixed-up in yakuza, drugs and prostitutes. Of course, these are pulp-style teenage girls, so their public faces never reflect their true feelings, and even more interestingly, there is a recurring theme that these females cannot be trusted. But even assuming IWGP exists in some hard-boiled version of reality, where normal women are too soft to survive without cunning or deception, what happens to them borders on misogyny. If you’re a female character in this world, you must be either mentally unstable, a sex worker, a bitch, or some combination of the three. At the very least, you must be a victim.

It’s possible the creators are simply pandering to their male audience, but when there are panels showing sprawled-out women who have been raped and strangled, or are otherwise being abused, it raises questions about whether this is indeed genre convention or if something else is up.

All four volumes of IWGP are available now.