Manga Review: Kurohime, Vol. 1

Kurohime, Vol. 1

Story & Art by Masanori, Ookamigumi, Katakura
Viz, 180 pp.
Rating: T+ (older teen)

Here’s a riddle: what do you get when you cross Fort Apache with Tomb Raider and add a supporting cast of villains and critters from The Mushroom Kingdom? If you guessed Kurohime, you’d be correct.

Kurohime opens with a scene cribbed from a vintage oater. A bandit in a ten-gallon hat and neckerchief robs a stagecoach and murders the passengers. Just as he’s about to shoot Zero, the sole eyewitness, a cloak-shrouded figure unleashes a torrent of bullets, stopping the bandit dead in his tracks. The mysterious crusader rides away, but not before revealing her identity to the little boy she saved: she’s Kurohime, a witch gunslinger famed for her smokin’ physique and skill with the senryu, a magic gun.

Flash forward ten years. Zero, now a skilled gunslinger in his own right, steadfastly believes in Kurohime’s inherent goodness, invoking her name whenever he aids someone in trouble. While investigating rumors of Kurohime’s death, he bumps into an eleven-year-old girl on the run from the heavily armed but utterly inept Onimaru Gang. Though she sheds tears and pleads for help, Zero quickly realizes that Himeko is no ordinary tweenager: she demonstrates considerable sharp shooting skills of her own, using Zero as a human shield as she brandishes a familiar-looking senryu. Common sense might dictate running for the hills (or at least allowing the kid to fend for herself), but Zero promises to protect Himeko, no matter the cost. His declaration triggers a startling transformation: Himeko morphs into Kurohime, wastes the gang, and announces that Zero is now “her dog.” Poof! Kurohime reverts to her eleven-year-old form. It seems that Kurohime’s overweening pride landed her in hot water with the gods, who, as punishment, stripped her of her magic and turned her into a girl. The only lasting remedy for their curse is for Kurohime to fall in love. (Warm, fuzzy feelings only affect temporary transformations.) Zero might just be the man to save her—provided her insults don’t drive him away first.

One of the manga’s running jokes is that Kurohime can only express feelings of tenderness under duress; the minute the dust settles, she’s back to her old schtick, using sorcery to enslave men. Normally such a plot device—in which a powerful woman is punished for taking traditionally male privileges—would send me running for the exit. Ditto for her outfit—she’s sporting vintage boob socks and a tunic so short it would give Paris Hilton pause. Yet Kurohime gives as good as she gets, spitting out one-liners and flattening her opponents with a truly bodacious weapon: demon bullets. These bullets may resemble shmoo-filled canisters, but when fired from the senryu, they tranform into a variety of nifty creatures, from a flaming phoenix-dragon to a fat, angry pig that can take a slicing and keep on dicing.

As you might infer from my description of demon bullets, Kurohime’s artwork synthesizes a variety of anime and video game influences to good effect. The leader of the Onimaru Gang, for example, looks like Mario and Luigi’s leather daddy cousin, while a rival sorceress bears an uncanny resemblance to Ursula, the octo-witch of The Little Mermaid. But the real scene-stealers are the demon bullets. The dragons and wolves are rendered in… well, I’d say “life-like detail,” but that’s stretching things a bit, given the animals involved. But the artistic team of one-name wonders lavishes considerable attention on fur, fangs, and scales to create believably menacing creatures. They don’t skimp on the more absurd-looking demons, either, conjuring up goofy-looking critters that might, under other circumstances, patronize the bathhouse in Spirited Away. The backgrounds are fairly simple, conveying a sense of place with a few choice details: a cactus, a fortress wall, a hedge. That restraint allows the artistic team to stage battle scenes that are as notable for their use of white space as they are for their kineticism.

It goes without saying that Kurohime won’t be every attacking fangirl’s idea of a good read, though I found its smart visuals, brisk pacing, and cool-looking weapons a reasonable trade-off for a few panels pandering to teenage male tastes. As long as the writers don’t soften the title character’s ballsy, unrepentant persona, Kurohime will remain high on my list of guilty pleasures.

This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. The official release date for volume one of Kurohime is September 4th.