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Title: Black Cat
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents may want to make sure they read this series before they let their children read it, as this series contains rude and crude behavior, blood and gore, bad language, violence, and sex humor. |
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why a series like "Black Cat" could be considered a success. It has all the ingredients of a hit action series. It features two bounty hunters, one young and one slightly older, and both are extremely attractive to the ladies. It features a lot of gunplay. It features a deep, dark secret of one of the characters. And there is a subplot about an outcast on a mission of revenge thrown in the mix. This could be the description of any series ranging from "Cowboy Bebop" to "Chrono Crusade," even to "Trigun" on some level. But in this case, these are the ingredients used to create "Black Cat," the newest discount manga from the "Shonen Jump" label. The series revolves around two sweepers (bounty hunters) named Train Heartnet and Sven. They spend their days catching wanted criminals and taking them in to collect the bounty on their heads. They've got a love/hate relationship that could only work in a piece of fiction.
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Carefree bounty hunter who is running from a dark past? Seen it.
Sven is the old sage of the two. He looks to be around the age of 30-35, but according to him he has had years of police experience, including being a detective at one point. A traumatizing memory sequence that will explain his change in careers is likely to happen later on in this series. Train, on the other hand, is the goofy assistant who tells jokes, never worries about money (of which they have little), and when he gets mad he becomes an unstoppable killer with his gun. The reason for this is that Train used to be a professional assassin many years ago, going by the name of Black Cat. Despite that reputation and everyone being scared by his very presence, Train roams the world, seeking out a man he wishes to kill. They may not have to wait long, though, as two girls may bring both these men closer to their goals. When they do, maybe they can wake the readers up before the finale, because "Black Cat" is a snooze fest. When you are reading something like "Black Cat," you almost know what to expect. The story is a very typical action storyline. I doubt any of us have any questions about where this is going, so I'm not going to debate how original this set-up is. We've also seen these two characters before, in different series too. Borrowed material will only take you so far, and "Black Cat" proves this.
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Dude, what is up with your teeth?
This is not a series written for people like me. This is a series written for people who are new to manga, who haven't read all the "Trigun”s "Chrono Crusade”s, and "Negima”s. This is a beginner's series, a stepping stone to the better stuff out there. There are advertisements at the back of the book for other "Shonen Jump" titles out in stores now, and I promise you that almost all of those are better than this one. The problems with this book are minor, but they somehow become big when you really start to think about them. Take Train, for example. In this series, he is supposed to have a dark past when he was a ruthless killer. However, it takes YEARS for someone to become a killer with the amount of skill Train has at his disposal, and Train is shown as being somewhere around the age of twenty to twenty-five! So the only way for this to be a real possibility is that Train would have to have been a killer at the age of fifteen, which is totally unbelievable, which in turn makes this "revelation" a bit hard to swallow. Same thing goes for Sven, whose detective career would have only lasted about three to five years before quitting (since most detectives at the absolute minimum become detectives around the age of thirty).
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No classic-in-the-making would be complete without a betrayal...
Maybe something in these characters’ pasts will explain why they are so skilled and deadly at such a young age, but for now I'm not buying it, as their young ages seem to be there for the sake of making this series marketable to teenage girls who love to swoon over pretty-looking boys like these. Oh, and just to let you know, the few glimpses of the bad guys we see confirm that the bad guys are using beauty products, so you can breathe a sigh of relief there. Story aside, "Black Cat" has some great production values. The artwork is excellent. The character designs may seem pretty typical and uninspired, but the rest of the series looks excellent. I don't know if the artwork can be called memorable, but it looks good for what it is, and it does what it sets out to do extremely well. Action sequences flow great, the backgrounds are very detailed, and the characters’ facial expressions show great character in them. This kind of artwork is very impressive, as some of the pages look good enough to frame. Another thing that this series has going for it is the action. There wasn't a whole lot of action in the first book, but what was there was pretty cool. These action scenes may not be anything I'm going to remember in the long run, but darn, they sure looked cool from what little I saw. The action alone may be enough to convince people to stick around for the whole series even if the story doesn't impress them.
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...or a girl.
From the way this series is being marketed, all the parties involved with this series seem to be planning on "Black Cat" being one of the next big money-makers. It contains a little bit of "Trigun," "Inu-Yasha," "Cowboy Bebop," and even "Dragon Ball" (on a much smaller scale). There are elements here that seem carefully calculated to appeal to both men and women. Loud action sequences for men, and pretty boys for the girls. Oh, and random humor. It never hurts to have random humor thrown in the mix. The question is, how much will people accept "Black Cat”? Personally, I believe "Black Cat" will be a temporary success, but it won't be a lasting one. "Black Cat" actually seems to want to mirror Disney's recent release of "Chicken Little" in many ways. Now you may be wondering how I managed to work "Chicken Little" into this review. Well, anyone who's seen "Chicken Little" will tell you that the movie was average. It contained pop culture references, pop songs on the soundtrack from (mostly) forgettable bands, and it was computer-animated, which seems to be all the rage these days. In other words, Disney looked at the success of "Shrek," "Shark Tale," and "Madagascar," took all the ingredients that seemed to make those films a success, and dumped "Chicken Little" on us.
Disney used to have a reputation for making the story the prime motivating factor behind their movies, but "Chicken Little" just felt like it was more of a product fueled by marketing and money than quality and story. In this sense, "Black Cat" feels the same way. It just seems too aware of itself and how much money it wants to make to be anything but a quick fix for the general public. It has all the ingredients most hit manga have, but none of the ingredients seem genuine and pure, and instead feel artificial and cheap. A pale imitation of the real deal, like eating a McDonald's cheeseburger instead of a freshly made cheeseburger from a local hamburger stand. This is the kind of series that I would probably read if it were in "Shonen Jump" every month, but I personally don't feel the series is worth buying, even with the low $7.99 price tag. After all, "Shaman King" and "Rurouni Kenshin" have that same price, but those are classics. I don't know if "Black Cat" gets better after the first volume, but right now I have little desire to find out.
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