Kikaider Code 02 1
Posted: February 13, 2009 Filed under: Kikaider Code 02 11 Comments »I decided to go back and try this series after having read the last volume. I read few enough series about robots fighting one another that it would at least be a novelty. I’m not entirely clear on the origins of the Kikaider franchise, but from the essay in the front, it sounds like Shotaro Ishinomori originally devised the plot to be a tokusatsu show, so I’m not sure if there was an original manga, or if this is based off the show, or if the manga and show ran concurrently and this is based off a loose manga adaptation. In any case, it’s an extremely literal interpretation of the source material. I kind of think it was based on the show only because the plot develops faster than would be natural in a manga series, or the original manga was based on the show rather than the other way around, if this is a retelling of the manga.
Most of the volume is actually fighting between robots. There are some interesting ideas developed in the prologue which harken back to Astro Boy (which I see has more of a homage since Ishinomori was an assistant to Tezuka) and apparently take a lot of inspiration from Pinocchio, which I have not read. The prologue sets things up with the main character’s estranged father asking her to perfect his conscience circuit so that his ultimate creation will be good rather than a mix of good and berserk, like he is now. The robot happens to look like her older brother, who was murdered when she was younger and was named Tobio Ichiro. I think much will be made of the conscience and the dynamics of good and evil, but parallels are drawn between God creating man as life and man creating robots as lifelike as possible. Lots of parallels are drawn to Christianity, actually. Some of them are interesting, but a lot of them are pretty typical anime-type fluff.
After these plot preliminaries are explained away (and she picks up a younger sister, who is also clearly a robot), a bunch of huge robots attack, and the malfunctioning robot beats them all up. There are a lot of big robots, and the battles go on for quite some time. There’s also an antagonist that shows up that I assume will be spotlighted later.
It’s a good thing that Mitsuko is actually a robot scientist that can work on Jiro, the robot, but I’m not sure how much she will need to since the conscience circuit seems to work except when Jiro is in battle. Even his wounds are something he can fix himself since he regenerates with nanotechnology. Basically, I think Mitsuko is just going to play keep-away with Jiro and her sister from the bad guys with lots of epic robot fights in between. I’m game, though. It’s not very long, and, like I said, I don’t see robot fights that often, so I’m all about trying this out.
I think the live action series probably came first, followed shortly after by manga or anime series. This Kikaider is fairly recent and is probably more of a remake.
I picked up the last volume too and I’m dying to read the rest of it at some point. I just want to read more Ishinomori stuff in general though.
[...] Hayate the Combat Butler (Mania.com) Briana Lawrence on vol. 4 of Hell Girl (Mania.com) Connie on vol. 1 of Kikaider Code 02 (Slightly Biased Manga) Emily on Koi ja nai no da! (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page) Aspi on [...]
I haven’t read anything by him at all, actually. I gave Cyborg 009 a pass, and I keep hoping something else by him will come out in English. I do like how some of the character designs in this series reflect his style, though.
I haven’t read anything outside of the final Kikaider Code 02 volume. The Otaku USA article about him got me curious, but then I found out just about everything is either out of print or hard to find. Blah.
I always get so bummed when I come late to the party on something and it becomes hard to track down. I’m having rotten luck with a few shoujo series at the moment because, for whatever reason, these ones I passed over years ago are out of print, and yet everything I took the time to collect from the same time period seems to be alive and readily available. I’m not sure how that works.
Cyborg 009 is out of print? I know a comic shop which had at least 10 volumes in stock the last time I visited, which was a week ago. I guess it doesn’t sell very quickly. Which would explain why it would go out of print.
Yeah, I think it went out of print a couple years ago, actually, so those volumes may have been sitting there for quite some time. Either that or the book is still in stock at the distributor, but that’s not really good either. The only article I think I’ve ever seen about the series is the one Shaenon Garrity wrote for the Overlooked Manga Festival. I’m pretty sure almost nobody read it. It’s kind of a shame, but I guess they can’t all be winners.
On a related note – http://www.tokyopop.com/corporate/biz_dev/447 – I love this list. I’m not sure when or how I found it, but it has spurred me into getting one or two things I wound up liking.
The store where I saw it on the shelves is Comic Relief, and to quote a different Overlooked Manga Festival article “When Comic Relief … doesn’t have a manga, that is one damn overlooked manga.”
I wish I had a store like that around here. What was the manga that Comic Relief didn’t have in the OMF article?
That was in the article on Walking Man.
Walking Man is pretty obscure. It’s a shame Fanfare books aren’t a little more commonplace. I’m still waiting for my comic shop to get Ice Wanderer and Disappearance Diary in stock. I think they’ve got a new distribution deal set up, so hopefully their books will appear a few more places now.