Friday, May 13, 2011

Akumetsu: One man - One Kill!

I haven't posted in awhile so I apologize for that, so to make up for it I decided to pick a really good manga this time, Akumetsu!

Akumetsu has a dual author partnership for it, the writing is done by Yoshiaki Tabata while the artist on it is Yuki Yugo. If you are familiar with either of those two, then you might know there other work as well, Zetman and Wolf Guy, both of which happen to be incredibly good series. Akumetsu is a seinen manga(aimed towards adults) due to the ideals and events that happen during this series. The series does seinen quite well, it's able to bring out big points in real society and it makes you think and wonder what is going on in our world even though it is a work of fiction. As of right now Akumetsu does not have an anime, it only has a manga with a total of 16 volumes, and its run time lasted from the year 2002 to 2006 which is a decent length in the manga industry.

Akumetsu takes place in modern Japan and opens up with some pretty hard hitting images, you could view this as a social commentary in manga form. The plot revolves around a group known as Akumetsu who go and kill corrupt businessmen in the Japanese economic system and also corrupt officials. A pretty gruesome series, so for those who don't take kindly to gore, hard hitting images, and very realistic ways of viewing the world then you may not want to read this(personally I think this isn't for the light hearted people). For a dictionary definition, Akumetsu translates to One man, One Kill; in this series that definition comes to life, for each corrupt businessman or politician that a member of the group Akumetsu kills, they then take their own life through suicide with the killing of the corrupted person. The group kills who they and the common people view as evil and a nuisance to the Japanese society, but since they themselves are killing people, they turn into what they are trying to kill, thus why they kill themselves as well(pretty cool right?).

The art style for Akumetsu is quite nice as well, if you're familiar with this series or other series done by these two authors, then you know how well it fits. The art is able to pull the emotions out of the people in it and the people reading it incredibly well, either doing so through the actions that happen or the reactions to those actions! In the above picture it shows the simple art style used in the manga, which is generally when everything is normal, however when things are about to 'get serious' as some people would say, the art style starts to change and through doing so it brings out different emotions.


Through the story, the art, and the emotion put into this series, it creates an incredibly blend that entices the readers to continue reading to see what happens next. A simply amazing series that I enjoyed whole heartedly when I was reading through this series. Personally I think everyone would be able to enjoy this series, but a quick reminder, this has a lot of killing, blood, vulgar language, and the like, so if you don't happen to be a fan of that, then I apologize for wasting your time with this read through; but if you do happen to not mind those and are looking for a decently sized read with good story and art, then this is definitely worth you time in reading, you can trust me on that! So I hoped you enjoyed this read, and I once again apologize for being so late with a new post, and I hope this might have been able to persuade you to reading or at least looking into the great series known as Akumetsu!