The Fall 2017 Manga Guide

ACCA

What's It About? 

The thirteen-district kingdom of Dowa owes much of its ninety-nine year peace to the efforts of ACCA, a civilian organization responsible for managing many of the kingdom's institutions, including the police force, the fire department, and various medical services. Jean Otus, as the vice-chairman of ACCA's inspection department, overseeing the interactions between these branches and cleaning up any kind of discrepancies that suggest criminal collusion, corruption, or major flaws in the system. Though he's a bit of an eccentric -- known as much for his tendency to smoke highly-taxed and rare cigarettes and his dry, almost listless demeanor as anything else – he's also an incredibly accomplished investigator and negotiator. Unfortunately, those same skills and personality have earned him the ire of certain members of the nation's ruling council of five, whose suspicions that he's organizing a military coup might upset much more than Jean's peaceful way of life

Available this November from Yen Press for $15.00, ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department is the inspiration for the 2017 anime of the same name and the latest work from accomplished artist Natsume Ono to be available in English.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Austin Price

Rating: 3.5

While there's plenty of talk of coming coups and enough heavy-handed foreshadowing to suggest that the “ninety-nine years of peace” Dowa has enjoyed are facing their end, ACCA:13-Territoriy Inspection Department might actually be the least fraught of Natsume Ono's works. At times the stakes feel even slighter than those of Ristorante Paradise. There's nothing like the fraught questions of family that wracked Not Simple or the struggles for identity and autonomy that defined House of Five Leaves.

Instead, like doopy-lidded protagonist Jean, Ono seems content to amble on from case to case and incident to incident with no sense of urgency, only the kind of lazy confidence that suggests failure may not be likely, but it wouldn't be so bad, either. It's a dry, droll little series that may borrow the format of a police procedural but which finds Ono more interested in the daily habits of Jean – his diet, his fashions, the little luxuries he affords himself – than with the individual cases he investigates or even the grand machinations moving his country.

Or, rather, finds her more interested in what these seemingly trivial details say about who Jean is than with what the details of the world around him might say about Dowa. For all that he's well-observed and intriguing – for all that he makes enjoyable and elegant company – the kingdom of Dowa seems unrealized. If the machinations of the council of five – particularly Grossular, who seems intent on framing Jean as part of an elaborate grab for power – seem so much less intriguing than they do, it's because this setting is so ill-defined. We know what the ACCA does, but what is at stake if they fail? Why should we care about a country that feels as if it has no national identity, no culture or character? ACCA-13 is droll in manners of plot and character that it feels as if nothing beyond Jean's little world matters much at all.

Yet that's easy to overlook in the moment, because Jean is so sensitively portrayed through all these little tics, as are a few of his friends. As much of his character is revealed in the sly upward slant of his smile or slight backwards tilt of his neck or the way he carries a box of doughnuts as there is in his love of cigarettes or the moment he confesses to a subordinate that nobody is beyond suspicion. All of which makes the fact that he's a complete enigma to friends and family even more intriguing: nobody fails to notice that for all his talent, Jean is a man surprisingly lacking in ambition, and, even more paradoxically, wedded to a job he neither needs nor even seems to care about. And so it's the central mystery of this character -- and the promise of Ono's always elegant art -- that makes ACCA-13 intriguing, so much more enticing than yet another story about political theater should be. That seems best: Ono's talents have always leaned towards fine character sketching than grandiose plotting; ACCA-13 seems primed to develop those abilities.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Natsume Ono is known more for her quietly introspective works than her rip-roaring adventures, so it should come as no surprise that ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Department is full of the thrill of internal bureaucracy. And yet, Ono's the kind of creator who can make even inter-departmental politics interesting, as this book proves. In part this is because she's a master of the Lady Macbeth sentiment to “look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it,” which is a pretty good way to describe most of the characters thus far introduced. Protagonist Jean is a master of the skill – at first glance, he looks like a spoiled rich kid who got his prestigious job in the Inspection Department through connections rather than merit. That, however, is a sham, one possibly cultivated very carefully: Jean lives in a fancy building because his family is employed as the supervisor, he smokes expensive cigarettes because tenants give them to him. Not a pin drops in his vicinity but he knows who dropped it and why. In fact, the only thing he doesn't seem to be aware of is the fact that his buddy Nino might be playing a similar game – and honestly, I wouldn't bet money that he doesn't know.

All of this makes ACCA's first volume feel like an intricate puzzle. Every interaction and conversation holds the potential to be meaningful once the real story gets going, and right now our job is to figure out who is telling what truth. Our instinct is to trust Jean, but that's really just because he's the point of view character, something that's pointed out at the end of the book. Whether or not he's on the level, at least a few of the people he works with probably aren't – this is politics, after all, and everyone's got an angle.

Of course, the downside here is that this is a relatively Slow Start to the series. If this is your introduction to Ono's work, that might be a pretty big deterrent, because despite fires and internal corruption, everything is very low-key here. That it's setting up to be something more may be clear, but you have to be interested in getting to that something, and the constant bickering of people in suits may not make all readers willing to stick around. Ono's art, while greatly smoothed out since her last English-language release, is still gritty and just far enough off the familiar path that it may also be off-putting to some readers, though her sense of composition is difficult to argue with. There's also an impressive amount of detail in the cityscapes and a real ease to reading that makes it easy to concentrate as much on why things are happening as what is happening itself. The art, in other words, facilitates reading rather than distracts from it.

ACCA's first book's primary directive is simply to get the ball rolling. It may be moving slowly right now, but it's going to be worth seeing where this goes. In a place where no one seems to trust anyone, there's no guarantee who is going to come out on top – and an office can be just as scary as any battlefield.

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Amy McNulty

Rating:

ACCA 13 volume 1 has the odd distinction of presenting a world sufficiently different from our own and yet still coming across as a mundane civil servant slice of life affair. Despite the purpose of ACCA being pounded into the reader's head (once in a cringingly awkward info dump of a boss saying “you know the purpose of our organization” to characters and then proceeding to explain in great detail the purpose for the audience's benefit), it's still not that clear—or perhaps just not that interesting. They inspect things. Protagonist Jean Otus is the rogue outsider who inspects the inspectors and sniffs out overlooked signs of corruption or incompetence. Cigarettes are so expensive in this world that no fewer than half a dozen characters have to emphasize how weird it is that Jean smokes, that it's a sign he's hiding shady connections and/or a large bank account. There are rumors that he's leading a coup d'état, but thus far, there's minimal evidence on the page. Despite there clearly be something going on with Jean, this laidback and quiet man who proclaims he has no love for the job despite being so good at it, this first volume is largely a dull affair. Even the quirk Ono gives to Jean (besides the incessant smoking)—his love for only the highest quality bakery treats—never seems funny, even if it is at odds with his emotionless countenance.

Ono's art style has always been distinctive, particularly her characters' faces, which tend to have longer noses and more heavily-lidded eyes than the average manga character. Everyone looks sleek in a uniform and even Ono's slightly sketch-like touch to the art doesn't detract from just how cool the ACCA 13 world looks. Despite being a made-up country, the backgrounds look quite similar to a variety of contemporary Japanese landscapes and urban neighborhoods, but still, the art feels lovingly detailed and helps keep the reader's attention throughout.

A number of Ono's titles have hit Western shores, but this one may be her least interesting so far. Perhaps the mystery of Jean and the world of inspection become more compelling in future installments, but so far, ACCA 13 volume 1 seems like a fantasy version of a police procedural—without any of the danger and high stakes of (TV) police life.