The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

Dolly Kill Kill

What's It About? 

Iruma Ikaruga's triumphant high school baseball game comes to a horrific end when the world is invaded first by wasps with flesh-dissolving venom and after by monsters that look like big-headed dolls who finish what the wasps began. Losing everyone he cares about in the blink of an eye, Iruma spends the next year barely trying to survive as he mourns the loss of everything he knew. A chance encounter in a ravaged convenience store introduces him to a girl named Vanilla and a group of people known as Trial & Error who are trying to bring down the “dollies” and reclaim the earth for humans. Iruma's not interested in helping until he catches a glimpse of the girl he liked and assumed was dead – a captive of the dollies. Now Iruma is motivated to do something, and heaven help anyone who gets in his way.

Dolly Kill Kill is written by Yukiaki Kurando and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura. Kodansha Comics released it digitally ($10.99) in April.

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I have to admit that I've lost my taste for apocalypse stories, not that they were ever my favorites. Dolly Kill Kill is at least a somewhat new take on the genre – rather than a dread disease or zombies, the world ends when the alien equivalent of murder hornets descend upon the earth in their giant hives and sting people to death with their flesh-melting venom. Hard at their heels are what are either giant dolls (think really creepy Hairdorables) or the world's worst mascots, and they “clean” up what the bugs left behind with what appear to be human vacuums before settling in to…finish the job? Just hang out and scare humans? I'm not sure, actually, but the bigger problem seems to be that the book isn't sure either. Vanilla, the girl our protagonist more or less saves in a convenience store, claims that they won't hurt people if people leave them alone, but also admits that she was captured by them once before going on to say that she's involved with a group trying to kill the so-called dollies off. But if they don't attack anyone who doesn't attack them, then what's the goal here? Why go straight to “kill them all” rather than “communication?” As far as I can tell, mostly they seemed to initially just be tidying up after the insects did their thing.

That capturing angle is probably the reason, although Vanilla doesn't really say anything more about it. The fact that the “scouts” of the dollies look like giant pregnant schoolgirls – or so we're told; I think they look more like hungry ghosts – and that as far as we know only girls are being captured is definitely suspicious. But mostly all of the characters come across as unhinged because that's what's going to move the story forward and quite possibly because the author is making some sort of point about the typically absurdly optimistic shounen protagonist, which Iruma was before things went south. And while he's well within his rights to be upset about the whole dolly thing and the death of his best bud Matsun, and to be a little off after spending such a long time alone and brooding, there's so little rhyme or reason to almost anyone's actions that the book doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

It very well could be that it doesn't feel the need to, however, because its raison d'être seems to be over-the-top action sequences in a ruined world, crazy faces, and some gross imagery. While all of those are fine when they have a solid story to back them up, I'm not feeling like this one does, and in fact it has less and less of one as the volume goes on. If you enjoy action horror stories, this does have both of those elements, although I wouldn't call them particularly well balanced or used, and even if you're looking for gross-out art, this feels a little half-assed. Honestly, I'd suggest (re)reading School-Live! if you're in the mood for a good apocalyptic story, because Dolly Kill Kill's first volume feels like playing Attack on Titan with your younger sibling's dolls.

---

Faye Hopper

Rating:

Dolly Kill Kill is classic, ultraviolent post-apocalyptic fiction. This probably explains why I dislike it. Like a lot of its genre, it revels in cruelty and despondency. The opening chapters depict the tranquil youth of a group of High Schoolers suddenly devastated by an alien invasion. Friends die, arms are melted off, and the manga makes in explicitly clear that the happy-go- lucky, we-can-do-anything worldview of the protagonist is shattered to pieces. While it is true that the manga does depict a battle for the soul of our lead as he remembers his reasons to live (his friends who he thought were dead might not actually be) and contrasts his impulsive rage with the methodical survivalism of a group of rebels, I can't help but see this as as wallowing in sadness and anguish, as people die constantly for no reason and no one has any moment of happiness. This perpetual hopelessness is at the center of so many works of the genre, and without moments of kindness and levity as a compliment, it feels like it's rolling around, laughing in the worst parts of human nature.

The only noteworthy thing about Dolly Kill Kill is its somewhat unique riff on an alien invasion. The genocidal force here doesn't indiscriminately slaughter in UFOs. Instead, they begin their genocide with a swarm of bees. They aren't little grey men. They're girly cartoons in polka dot dresses who would be cute if they didn't have rows of razored teeth. This distinction, however, is purely aesthetic. Otherwise, the Dollys serve the same narrative function as the zombies in The Last of Us: to destroy society, to inflict undue suffering on random, innocent people, and to justify the ultraviolence. The slight twist in monster formula only serves to sharpen the edge, to up the grimdark. After all, isn't it so ironic that something so adorable is wreaking so much havoc? This incredibly trite idea is all the invention and creativity Dolly Kill Kill has apart from its gore. Otherwise, it's just an incredibly base, puerile and generic Walking Dead-alike, and has all the played-out examinations of the darkness at the root of human nature and unending despair one would expect.

I am very tired of apocalypse stories that revel in unceasing brutality and violence. Yes, people can write whatever kinds of stories they like. Stories, however, are a part of the world that birthed them. They exist inside a context, a social climate in which they are consumed. We are living a kind of apocalypse at this very moment, and it is one that is infinitely less exciting and so much more terrifying than the demented, bare-toothed Armageddon of Dolly Kill Kill. With the state of the world in mind, it's hard to see Dolly Kill Kill as anything but shallow, lame, violent nihilism. And that's just not what I want to read right now.