I can only imagine that Tsutomu Nihei recently got into roguelike fantasy RPGs, and that must have inspired his latest manga, which is in many ways quite different from his usual work. Best known in the west for Blame! and Knights of Sidonia, his manga tends to be futuristic and dystopian in nature, with stories transpiring within vast, unsettling technological megastructures, filled with horror-inflected sci-fi monstrosities. Prior to his manga career, Nihei worked in the construction industry, before studying for an art and design degree. His interest in buildings and extreme architectural styles uniquely flavor his manga, with tales often light on dialogue but packed full of visual creativity and gargantuan splendor.

While Blame! features a vast machine-built city that spans almost the entire solar system's volume, and Knights of Sidonia is set on a seed starship around eighteen miles long, Tower Dungeon's titular monolithic erection is a massive pillar of indeterminate size, levitating vertically, high above the mountains it dwarfs. At its peak waits an evil necromancer who murdered the local kingdom's king and abducted the princess, heir to the throne. In tried-and-true fantasy style, a group of intrepid knights challenge the imposing edifice, though with their repeated efforts bearing little fruit, they turn to the local peasant folk for numerical reinforcement. This is where our protagonist Yuva fits in.

Nihei is more of a worldbuilding and visual concepts guy – we don't learn a whole lot about Yuva other than he's a stoic, reliable sort who helps his family and neighbors and doesn't give up in the face of adversity. He turns up for duty with an upturned pot for a helmet and a stick of firewood for a weapon as his only concessions to armament, much to the derision of other soldiers. They pay attention when he demonstrates his freakish strength, though, lifting enormous boulders without breaking a sweat.

Yuva joins a small group on his first expedition, some of whom have already been grievously injured by previous forays into the tower. Some are covered in wound dressings, others appear to be missing eyes, or have bandaged limbs. Immediately it becomes clear that this isn't going to be an easy journey – Nihei's characters are frequently beset by undead soldiers, presumably their former comrades, while the corridors and open areas both harbor the altered remains of beings that were once human but have now become something… else.

As is common to Nihei's works, explanations for the multitudes of strange creatures and architecture are limited, if they are even offered at all. His characters barely comprehend this strange place, and readers aren't offered privileged information; we are as much in the dark as the uneasy adventurers. In this way, it's more of an atmospheric piece, with Nihei's deceptively simple yet confident linework achieving stunning vistas of sometimes dizzyingly vertiginous landscapes and impossible structures. His eye for composition shapes many scenes with bizarre yet effective angles that truly conjure an air of terrifying verticality.

Nihei's character art has matured with time; in a way his now-simpler style is evocative of Chainsaw Man's Tatsuki Fujimoto, particularly when it comes to facial expressions. Previous Nihei works had a colder aesthetic, with characters often difficult to tell apart, whereas this is much less of a problem with Tower Dungeon. There's a wonderful variety even within the Royal Guard group. Monsters are also varied, and incredibly weird, which isn't a surprise considering the bizarre creature designs in both Sidonia and the more recent APOSIMZ.

At only 160 pages, it's a disappointingly short volume, as it seems the real story is only getting started towards the end. As a huge fan of Nihei's work, I'm excited to see where he goes with his foray into the fantasy genre. While recent sci-fi anime series Kaina of the Great Snow Sea, written and designed by Nihei, was somewhat fantasy-tinged, there's no sci-fi aspect at all so far in Tower Dungeon. Buildings look like they've been hewn straight from rock, or hastily cobbled together with ill-fitting blocks, rather than constructed with metal and carbon fibers. It's an unusual look for a Nihei manga, and it's fascinating to see him do something new, even if the concept of an enormous, unknowable, dangerous dungeon is well within his wheelhouse. I can't wait for the next volume in September.