Dogs 1

One thing that fascinated me through the entire volume was the art.  The artist only draws in black and white.  Screentones are only used every few pages in spots, and then usually only as a solid shape in the background.  Characters rarely have any value on their clothing, and usually it is the sparse female characters that have one or two items toned in (and Badou, because he has red hair).  There is no hatching to make up for it, either, like One Piece uses hatching for value instead of screentone. The art is literally almost entirely black on white, and the effect is pretty impressive.  There are problems with the fight scenes because of it (usually I had problems figuring out what was going on when Heine strangled people with the chain attached to his gun), but still, it lends something extra-pulpy to the plot and was what I noticed most while reading the book.

I liked the format of the prologue stories a bit better, but I still liked what I saw going on in this volume.  The action starts immediately with Badou failing a mission and Heine stepping in to save him.  From there, we are taken more and more by a character from Heine’s past that seems to be stalking him and… either hired or is somehow related to the gang he took out while saving Badou.

Also, Frank Miller can eat his heart out, because one action sequence after Heine was captured featured a panel from inside Heine’s mouth, with his teeth in the foreground, the instant before he bites and tears half of a mob boss’s face off when he unexpectedly lashes out after capture.  Holy crap.

In case that wasn’t enough for you, immediately afterwards he engages in a fight with another immortal, and the two of them fill each other with bullets and kind of hack each other apart in general.  It was a good fight, and I approved.

Part of me liked the fact that Heine kept what appeared to be a wallet chain attached to his gun for the purposes of strangling dudes while he shot other dudes at the same time.  I mean… wallet chain?  Really?  For strangling while you shoot?  Is that a step too far over the top?

Probably not.

There’s some plot developments, mostly surrounding Heine and his past.  Not a lot of details are revealed, but it’s clear that this is the general direction the action will take the story.  There’s also a brief look at Naoto’s quest involving the twin of the sword she wields, but she’s only in the story long enough to hack some guys apart and meet up with Heine and Badou.  There’s also a kind of antagonist for Heine introduced named Giovanni.  I can’t tell if Giovanni really likes Heine or really hates him, but the two do engage in some epic battles, and he’ll be back for more later.

It’s… well, you aren’t going to be reading it for the plot at this point, but the action’s pretty awesome.  Good enough to keep me entertained for a few more volumes, at least.  The characters and the quirks of the world they live in are also pretty fantastic, so it’s possible the plot will be quite good when it gets going, too.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.