Forum - View topicREVIEW: Kemono Jihen GN 1
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MagicPolly
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I really love this manga, I'm glad it's finally being released in English.
I find this really interesting compared to your reaction to Inugami in your reviews of the anime, I remember you being much more suspicious of him and thinking he had negative ulterior motives. He definitely would come off more sinister on a first read/watch, but with more context he is sincere |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Stick around long enough and you'll see me figure things out!
 But yes, knowing spoiler[how much worse Inari is] definitely gave me a different perspective. I still don't 100% trust Inugami, but he's better than the other adult in the picture.
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wolf10
 Posts: 901 |
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My very strong, very badly articulated feelings for this series are already a matter of public record, but I'll use this opportunity to gush unintelligibly some more anyway. I have so many feelings. For me it's probably shounen manga of the decade, and I read a lot of shounen manga. (I do agree with the B+ score for this first volume, but I know it gets better.) I think it's relatively rare (outside of Pretty Cure) for a monster-of-the-week series to care as much as Kemono Jihen does. I think a different series would have killed Hayato for the unforgivable crime of being a preteen shoplifter, and as convenient fodder to hammer home the age old "you can't save everyone" lesson. (While chapter 2 would normally be way too early for that kind of message, I feel a lot of series lately have been doing it chapter 1.) Even Yataro (Kabane's cousin) avoids the "karmic" death a sufficiently jaded reader might be trained to expect. He's 100% shithead, at least form what we see of him, but that doesn't translate to "deserves to die horribly" in the manga's worldview, which I appreciate for a whole lot of reasons. It's overall a very interesting magazine-mate for Moriarty the Patriot (or as I call it, "Dead Little Boys: The Series," on account of its somewhat... limited imagination in establishing early antagonists). Shiki's initial cruelty is also amped way up compared to the anime adaptation (he's meaner than Bakugo here), but the self-destructive way Kabane overcomes his hazing gives Shiki a proper visual for the pain he didn't fully realize he was inflicting. (spoiler[Kabane ripping his own arm off to reheat the bath] is a very effective line to cross.) It's a lot of character work for one chapter, but it also shows how Kabane's abilities can be put to meaningful use outside of the genre's bread-and-butter. All said, I am glad this series is getting physical copies in English, and hopefully it will catch up to the 17 volumes out in Japanese. Also, Inugami is ossan goals. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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While we're on the topic of folklore and whatnot, the review doesn't mention the names - namely that Kabane is not just a zombie, essentially, but his name means "summer wings", er, "corpse". (The kanji say "summer wings" but "kabane" means "corpse".) It's one of those things that I know I shouldn't think too deeply about, but considering Kabane's situation, I just can't help wondering about 1. who gave the boy a name that sounds like "corpse", 2. why anyone thinks "dorotabo" is in any way worse or creepier as an insulting nickname than his actual name.
Anyway, Kemono jihen was a very pleasant surprise, I picked up the manga after watching the show, but then fell off - unfortunately it's one of those manga where I tend to care about B plots and secondary/tertiary characters, more than main ones, so my attention wanders off easily. Regardless, it's good, so I hope there will be a second season of the anime sometime. |
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wolf10
Posts: 901 |
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Incidentally, "Shiki" can also mean "woven fabric," because spider boy, gettit? "Inugami" means "dog god," of course, because tanuki are raccoon dogs. Akira lucked out with a perfectly common, normal given name, but "light" is still pretty fitting for him.
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Shiki's name does, in fact, mean "weave", the kanji is 織 - the same character as in 織姫 "Orihime". Akira's name doesn't mean "light", it's 晶 which in this context means "crystal" (same character as in 晶化 "chrystallization" or 氷晶 "ice crystal" or Sailor Moon's 銀水晶 which literally means "silver quartz crystal"), so it's a good fit for him as well. Most everyone else has a punny name, too. Kabane just stood out to me because it's funny how he has such a macabre name and to that, a nickname that is meant to be insulting but is infinitely better than his actual name. 
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wolf10
Posts: 901 |
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But at least it's not like Ace Attorney, where you can guess whodunit based on whoever's name is closest to "Totally Notakiller." (And nobody notices.) |
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