A staple of fiction, dystopia is a concept with a myriad of applications, but like all concepts, its effectiveness is strongly dependent on execution. Spelling out the specifics of oppression, the viewpoints those oppressed individuals see it executed through, and especially who, exactly, the oppressed are supposed to allegorically stand in for, all contribute to the tone of the dystopian story an author is spinning. And that's all just the conceptual table-setting before you get into what the actual story inside your oppressive setting will be. Ayaka Katayama's Fungus and Iron finds itself excited to play in this sort of genre space, but ends up merely splashing in the shallow ends of several metaphorical pools that are those potential story options. It's a weird book, but mostly because I wasn't really sure what it was or wanted to be by the end of the first volume.

The opening chapter of Fungus and Iron seems straightforward enough—possibly too much so—for anyone familiar with the beats of dystopian fiction: Amigasa is a fascist government that regulates their soldier citizens, and our protagonist Dante is possessed of a learning disability that leads to him getting by significantly less affected by their propaganda. Until we and Dante get outside the city, things seem basic in a very drag-and-drop story template. Everything including the emotions of the soldiers is based on orders, no one questions what's going on or what's outside besides Dante, so he (along with we, the readers) just kind of kill page time in this setup until we can actually get outside and get an idea of what's going on. The 'revelations' that happen after, however, are similarly bare-bones. The most compelling aspect of it is Dante's genuine-feeling wide-eyed interest in the things he sees and has happen to him.

So naturally, after this dystopian story hits the shocking revelation of "the protagonist is living in a dystopia", the plot brings Dante back inside the city to take on more of a conspiratorial angle. Expansion into espionage isn't the worst direction to go after the setting has been established, and there's a dryly amusing aspect to the idea that Dante's utter lack of booksmarts makes him as awkward a fit for anti-establishment rebels as it did for the establishment itself. The more complex idea here, of course, is that the free-thinking rebel faction can actually utilize and appreciate Dante's offbeat contributions, at least continuing that "You're special because you're different" through-line that these sorts of stories find their appeal on. It's perhaps a little aggravating that Aoi, the girl Dante originally meets who spurs his shift to whole-hearted governmental opposition, ends up completely backgrounded afterwards. But as a reader, you can almost roll with it, following the journey of this odd man who still fixates on the people and places he saw outside his box of a home as his motivation for thinking more metaphorically outside the box.

So imagine my surprise when, after spending half the book clunkily but earnestly deploying those concepts, Fungus and Iron suddenly shifts into a distinctly shonen battle-manga style framework. Body-shifting superpowers and special moves are employed, Dante is dropped into a training arc for a chapter, and a gaggle of new, colorfully-designed characters with their own distinctive abilities are brought in to clash with the pointed uniformity of so many others we'd interacted with until now. Even Dante himself starts getting drawn with more of that decided spiky shonen lead-style, akin to someone like Ichigo or Denji. Aoi is shunted into the background even more to the point where she and the outside world are barely mentioned as motivations for Dante, and the mechanics of the dystopian mushroom mind-control seem to be afflicting very few of who are now presented as the main cast. The active 'world' of Amigasa is no more elaborated on than it was in that mildly intriguing first chapter. Instead, at the end of only the first volume here, it comes off less like Ayaka Katayama was effectively building up some kind of layered genre mash-up, and more that they suddenly decided this was what they were more interested in doing at this moment.

It can make Fungus and Iron kind of fascinating to follow as a study in an author working through their own story. That metatextual, structural interest is definitely more compelling than the surface-level genre appeals the book skips across. That's because the allegorical ideas never get time to gel, if they're even meant to be there in the first place. Is there some sort of societal commentary to be communicated by men and women being separated here, and Dante's feelings being accelerated when he encounters Aoi? Who knows, because the story hardly dwells on that detail afterwards, and Dante meets several other girls in the resistance cell later on with no comment. Is there dissonance between Dante's dyslexia marking him as an outlier who can't be controlled by Amigasa and a valuable asset for the Ether faction? It's not clear, instead mostly being treated as something of a disingenuous application of the kind of 'stupid hero' shonen framework Dante has found himself occupying by the end. It means trying to follow the series from the outside, as a window into its construction by its creator, is the most compelling read you're going to get out of Fungus and Iron, because it's virtually impossible to tell where it's going or what it's supposed to really be about on a fundamental story level.

That amateurish aspect extends to the art, though admittedly in more of an endearing way. As mentioned, the character designs (especially for Dante) shift wildly over the course of the chapters as the book picks and chooses what kind of story it's telling. Fights feel more fluid by virtue of wearing the messiness better, but more deliberate pacing of dialogue can be awkward to follow at times. It's a testament to the whiplash-inducing priorities of Fungus and Iron that one of the more interesting visuals, the mushroom-dominated outside landscape, becomes irrelevantly forgotten after that initial chapter. After that, it's all dystopian box-building cities and underground tunnels. The late-game addition of various body-morphing superpowers does promise some more flourish moving forward—that is, if the series indeed sticks with that angle longer.

Fungus and Iron is a weird, flawed, and unpolished piece of fiction. I can definitely say I was interested all the way through reading, but that's almost entirely because of my fascination at seeing what kind of story Katayama was going to morph it into next, as opposed to any investment I had in concepts or ideas it was exploring. It's a fundamental problem that means it will probably work even less for other readers than it did for me: There's simply very little time spent on any of the setting or characters to let people get invested, so the most we can hope for is that it settles down into something with enough depth to hook an audience moving forward.