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The Fall 2020 Manga Guide
Tokyo Shinobi Squad

What's It About? 

Tokyo, 2049... Thanks to the Galapagos Reform enacted by the government, Russia, China, America and Japan are now connected by a Hyper Loop system. This globalization has turned Tokyo into the most crime-ridden city in the world. To fight the rising crime, those who have been working in the shadows since the Sengoku period are needed... They are...the Shinobi

Tokyo Shinobi Squad features a story by Yūki Tanaka and art by Kento Matsūra. Viz Media has released all three volumes of the manga for $6.99 each. The first and final six chapters of the manga are also available at Shueisha's MANGA Plus site.








Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It can be a worrisome sign when a creator immediately feels the need to say that he doesn't agree with the politics in his story. Fortunately with Tokyo Shinobi Squad the reason why that happens is almost instantly clear and turns out not to be quite as terrible as the places my mind went – the base premise of the series is that when a future Japanese PM built fancy hyper-travel lanes (well, tubes) between Japan and a variety of other countries, including China, Russia, and the US, Tokyo almost overnight became the most crime-ridden city on the planet as gangs, thugs, and other unsavory types took over. While that definitely doesn't paint a rosy picture of what an international city might look like, it also isn't that far off from what other science fiction series have done, making me think that the writer was just covering his ass, for which we can't really blame him.

As a story, Tokyo Shinobi Squad's first volume is just good old-fashioned shounen action featuring a slew of amazingly overpowered characters. En is an eleven-year-old kid from Thailand trying to find his shinobi dad while protecting a ninpo scroll that teaches people to memorize virtually anything quickly, and he's landed in Tokyo as part of his quest. He's almost instantly targeted, which leads him to hiring Jin, an eighteen-year-old super ninja who has mastered the art of controlling lightening and/or magnetism (which it is didn't feel hugely clear). Because Jin is a shounen protagonist, he takes En under his wing and makes the little guy part of his shinobi squad (in Tokyo – we have a title!), which also consists of Tora, who can turn into a tiger, and Papillon, who can…shred her clothes and use the fabric as weapons? It hasn't really been explained yet, but her name means “butterfly” in French and she used to be a model, which is apparently more important than her attack. Also she gets a nude shower scene. For the plot. Really.

In any event, this is decent fun, even if I'm not fully sold on it yet. Jin's insouciance and general disregard for governmental authority, as well as the way he took En in even before he fully realized what he could do, put him in the “likeable ruffian” category, and the variety of bizarre attacks and skills on display is impressive. All of the villains do look a bit alike – taller and beefier than Jin and Tora, basically – and the plot seems to jump from job to job without a whole lot of explanation or cooldown time, which can be overwhelming. The science fiction, urban dystopia setting does feel like a decent change of pace from the historical ninja genre, but this first book is still busily trying to establish itself and feels as if it may be trying too hard, both in art and story. But it does have potential, and since Viz released the first three volumes all at once, finding out if this is going places you want to tag along to isn't going to be a months-long task.


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