Ryuko, a 2-volume manga series by Eldo Yoshimizu, does not hesitate to keep throwing things at the reader. It's funny, because all the review blurbs on the back describe it as a crime thriller, but it feels more like an '80s action movie. Just one excuse for crazy action sequences after another.
Ryuko is the daughter of a former yakuza boss, sent into exile by his brother. They ended up in Afghanistan, befriending the king, but her father eventually sided with a general against the king. Ryuko killed her father when he learned she agreed to take in the king's infant daughter. The story moves to Japan, when she learns her mother isn't dead, but a simple reunion isn't enough. Ryuko meets two important criteria which could make her the ruler of a hidden army of criminals, "the Black Glory" if she wants to, and can survive.
In the midst of all that, Yoshimizu adds in that Ryuko and her father were in an Afghan village when it was wiped out by the Soviets in the '80s, but that a boy they met survived, was adopted by someone Yoshimizu draws as a dead ringer for Brian Cox's character in The Bourne Identity, and became an agent for the CIA, who have their own interest in that secret crime army.
In the midst of all that, gunfights, fistfights, swordplay, death by missile, death by motorcycle used as a missile, stealing a train car full of money with a helicopter, patricides, tearful confessions, casual badassery, on and on. Some people have a very different definition of "crime thriller" than me.
Which isn't a complaint. I love that Yoshimizu just keeps piling on the double-crosses, the scheming, the surprise reveals and alliances. Even when things slow down for character backstory, it's still the sort of character backstory that involves an occupied village and a girl on horseback attacking grown soldiers. It moves things forward, and it's exciting.
In action sequences, Yoshimizu's art will take on this mixture of dense shadows, just solid black, and a blurring twisting effect. Bodies are drawn like they're almost fluid, loose limbs and shapes bending under the forces the movement exerts. Panels are suddenly leaping across pages, or sharply angled and tilted to one side or the other. Sometimes it falls into incomprehensibility, where there are just a few dark shadows vaguely shaped like people amid a crapload of speedlines and black ink done like spots of blood.
Mostly though, it works. Ryuko's facial design is very simple. Sharp nose, huge eyes framed by jet-black hair where the bangs form a sharp curtain at the top of the eyes. Whatever other chaos may be going on, you can almost always pick out her face and her expression in there somewhere.
All the characters eligible for controlling the Black Glory are women, but none of them - Ryuko, her mother, a young woman named Situ Zi - are actually interested in it. Instead, there's always some guy - Situ Zi's grandfather, Ryuko's uncle, Brian Cox - who wants that power and the women are just a convenient way to acquire it. Someone they expect to manipulate from the background. All they see is the advantages they envision. As the ones to have to lose something to gain that "honor", Ryuko and the others understand it's a poisoned chalice.
There's a theme of parents, intentionally or otherwise, making choices that impact their children's lives, but perhaps not in ways they could predict. Ryuko's father seems to have instilled a sense of honor and compassion in Ryuko, even as those qualities dwindled in him. Whether she intended it or not, Ryuko raised the king's daughter in a world of crime and violence, so Valer takes to those things. But she's also loyal to her childhood friend Sasori, which, for all Ryuko might mock it, is probably something else Valer learned from her. Situ Zi's father doesn't want her mixed up in her grandfather's criminal schemes, but out of a desire to protect him, she goes along with it.
Yoshimizu varies the art during the quieter moments as well. Sometimes characters are drawn with these thick dark lines to where they're just a vague shape. Like someone doing an exercise in shading with a block of granite. At other times, Yoshimizu goes entirely the other direction, with a white backdrop and the character simply outlined against it. Like they're empty inside and the world around them no longer exists. And Yoshimizu may use either one for a similar reaction. Shock at learning something they never expected, for example.
Which is part of why I enjoyed this so much. I never knew what was going to be waiting as I turned the page, because it seemed like any approach, any layout, was possible.
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