Gimmick 9

Youzaburou Kanari / Kuroko Yabuguchi – Viz – 2009 – 9 volumes

We still have to face the fact it’s a shounen manga, and we have to swallow some pretty cheesy lines during this final showdown (“You still don’t get it! SFX should only be used for good!”), but I still enjoyed it an awful lot.  The details that go into explaining how the SFX are created are stripped away here, and we get a lot of backstory and resolution to the earlier conflicts in the series.  It was pretty easy to follow even without having read most of the previous volumes, and I liked it a little more for that, too.  To be fair, the story wasn’t very deep or complex (Kohei had a mentor, he messed up and fled Hollywood, he’s trying to reconcile himself with his mistake), but still, I’ve seen far more confusing explanations for far less plot.

The fact that makeup artists can be divided into “good” and “evil” is also still pretty hilarious.  It likely wasn’t intentional, but I still couldn’t get enough of Kohei’s soulless rival here.

I think a big part of what made this final volume so enjoyable, even without the details about the makeup or knowledge of the plot of the series, was Kohei himself.  He’s a super-upbeat character, and he frequently finds himself in situations where he positively overcomes trials without complaining or even flinching.  Most shounen manga characters lament their lot in life at least a little, but Kohei usually just goes with the flow and solves his problems.  He does get down on himself here, but that doesn’t really change his positive outlook.

There’s an epilogue and a side story at the end of the volume, both of which I enjoyed much more than the final battle.  The epilogue is a nice way to end the series, and was a little more touching than the usual run-of-the-mill shounen title.  The extra story was sort of a prequel, and covered an incident in Kohei’s Hollywood training.  We do get details about SFX makeup application in that story, and about Zombies to boot, so that also made up for the absence in the rest of the volume.

While the plot of the series seemed pretty unremarkable, it was hard to deny the charm of Kohei or the novelty in a manga series about SFX makeup.  I enjoyed it for the detail it went into about the makeup itself, including frequent references to makeup techniques in popular Hollywood movies.  I don’t think I’ll go back for more volumes, but it certainly was a worthwhile and unique read.  I love well-researched series like this.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.