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Black God: Vol 1 by Dall-Young Lim and Sung-Woo Park
01/07/2008 . Source: Phil Jones 
pub: Yen Press/Orbit Books. 220 page graphic novel. Price: £ 5.99 (UK), $10.99, $12.75 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-7595-2349-4. Buy Black God in the USA - or Buy Black God in the UK  check out websites: www.yenpress.co.uk and www.orbitbooks.net
Originally published in Young Gangan by Square-Enix aimed at the senien manga fraternity (Senien as in young male aged 18-40ish). It is in fact that the writer and artists are Korean. So does this make it Manhwa, Korean-style manga. Well, no. Not really. As it is very much in the style of traditional manga, set in modern day Tokyo.
Ibuki Keita is a young games programmer who like to generally bum about. His mother died a few years ago, the day after she sees a woman with the same look and appearance, a sort of doppelgänger. Keita feels that somehow her death is connected but not sure how. With his mother gone, he is looked after by a slightly older school friend, Sano Akane, as his father is pretty well absent from his life. Although the two are like brother and sister, Akane clearly loves Keita.
On his way home one night, Keita seeks to satisfy his love of ramen (a sort of Japanese soup) and stops at his favourite ramen stand. He starts to tell the owner about his mother's death and the events that led up to it. When he mentions about the doppelgänger, he is corrected by a young scruffy-looking girl who says it was a Doppeliner. Every person has two others who look identical to that person. Doppeliners share a portion of a fate and if two meet they cancel each other out and the last assumes the other two's luck or 'fate'.
Things get a bit nasty, though, when another man turns up and starts to beat up the young girl and both the ramen stall owner and Keita try to step into help out. The young girl, Kuro, is a Mototsumitama as is the man attacking him. Keita hears bits and pieces about the two of them as they fight but things get a bit nasty and Keita loses his arm.
When he wakes up, everything seems normal. He's at home and appears to be OK. The only thing is, he discovers Kuro there and realises it's not all a dream. Kuro explains that she replaced his severed arm with hers and the two have to stay in close proximity for it to heal properly. When Akane turns up, she's none too impressed with the fact there's another girl. After a bit of explaining, the two of them come round to the idea of the replacement arm and the whole Motosumitama thing. Kuro explains that she and Keita are joined and this pact or contract allows Kuro to be a stronger fighter.
The front cover is pretty much the same as the Japanese version even down to the placement of the text which is always good to see. I never understood why covers are changed. The artwork is the first thing you notice and it is very impressive. The characters have a quite 'real' look and it's easy to tell different characters apart. The backgrounds are detailed and often convey a real sense of depth.
The action scenes especially are beautifully drawn. Often, more is conveyed in the drawings than the text. The sfx has been translated as well as the text still conveying Honorifics. The translation is good with no major grammatical or spelling mistakes. It would have been good to see some translation notes though.
Pretty much out the tin there wasn't really anything I didn't like about this. The artwork, as I said before, is superb. It would have been good to see a bit more in colour apart from the first page with the content, but you can't have everything. You do kind of know what you're getting.
Not much really in the way of set-up but enough to build up to several action sequences. There's enough dangling carrots in the way of drip feeding enough information about Mototsumitama to get you interested, the idea of Doppeliner, hints at the whole contract and fighting system of Motosumitamas. It leaves enough dangling questions to make you want to know more. Who is so intent on killing Kuro? Who are the strange cleanup crew who arrives after a fight? There's a good balance between information given and enough left unexplained to make you hungry for more.
I think its sufficiently different and interesting to warrant further reading along with the impressive artwork you can really do no wrong. There's plenty of humour and Kuro's ability to wind up Keita is entertaining in itself. The second story helps to develop Kuro and how she arrived in the state she did at the ramen stall that night. Hopefully, more character development will ensue in future volumes and it doesn't totally fixate on action sequences.
Yen Press has its own age rating system and in the case of 'Black God' is rated for older teen L S V (language, sexual content, violence). There is some titillation, colourful metaphors and plenty of violence and it's good to see Yen Press taking an active stance to indicate the overall content.
Phil Jones
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