Customer Reviews

Crying Freeman, Vol. 1 (v. 1)

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This work is an orgy of complete excess. From the constant nudity, sex (and rape), blood-spurting wounds, audacious assassinations, and pure nonsense like the Chinese Mafia outfitted with their own fleet of battleships and submarines, and their own private islands sculpted into the shapes of dragons(think Chinese Mount Rushmore), lets just say a major suspension of disbelief is necessary to make this work for the reader.

But it can work: for one thing, the art is absolutely beautiful: the artist is audacious and free with line and tone when depicting human bodies and fast action. That verve is contrasted with the technically amazing rendering of cars, guns, and the highly detailed cityscapes: the city of Hong Kong really comes alive. The writing trades in nonstop action and plot twists, and is suspenseful and exciting.

Crying Freeman works like the Kill Bill movies by Tarantino, or John Woo's HK films The Killer, or Hard Boiled. The situations are so wild and over the top, the characters are so extreme, that it all comes off like pulp fiction on steroids. The sheer gusto and stylistics of the work propel the reader straight through the most insane and jaw dropping situations

One needs to have a high tolerance for some seriously depraved antics: in one story arc "the world's foremost tattoo artist", who conveniently just happens to be an incredibly hot Asian babe, begins work on Freeman's full-body tatoo. Then she gives him oral sex while Freeman's mama-san mentor eggs her on--"drain his vigor!". Later, the tattoo artist is kidnapped, raped (which is graphically illustrated), and cut up by thugs. Yet she manages to stagger back to complete her tattoo, straddling Freeman with her bloody body until she finally dies on top of him as she finishes her work.

That kind of violent insanity is Crying Freeman's bread and butter. Personally, I much prefer the more serious and historical works, Path of the Assassin, or Lone Wolf and Cub, both written by Koike. And Koike teamed up with Ikegami again for the masterful, modern, gangsters-meet-politicians epic Sanctuary, which is superior to Crying Freeman. However, this is a damn fun book, which, when taken for the blast of pulp fiction excess that it is, makes an exciting and entertaining read.

I got my copy today of Crying Freeman, a manga by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami - the NEW MANGA FROM DARK HORSE...not the first mid-90's issue from VIZ or even the VIZ ani-manga. I know, the anime Crying Freeman was exceptional, but this manga is nothing short of brilliant. I've always wanted this book in English, having picture read it many-many years ago, I fell in love with it because of its western style. As a matter of fact, if it were printed reading left to right...but as always Dark Horse remains true to the creator's standard, again bringing the best in 'Seinen' manga in a market smothered in shounen/shojo fare.

Emu Hino is a 29 year old artist who witnesses two Yakuza hits performed by the same assassin. The assassin cries after he kills his targets, and it's this moment of vulnerability that Emu focuses on so much so she develops an unhealthy fixation on him, paintings of his crying face litter her studio. She knows he's going to come for her, because she's witness and she becomes obsessed with the notion of meeting him.

She doesn't go to the police and get help, rather, she decides to accept her fate and hopes only when he sees her he will make love to her before killing her. Emu is a virgin. 0_0. Yeah, a 29-year-old virgin. These women do exist, I know that's hard to fathom.

I don't want to spoil the manga or the anime for those unfamiliar with the story, but the assassin, named Yo Himomura does indeed fine Emu, and because this an ADULT title, does fulfill her wish...it's after this that he can't bring himself to kill her, and he has his reasons--

I totally recommend this book; the art work is thickly inked with gorgeous use of tone and the story is compelling, if not richly erotic. I can't wait for the additional volumes!

Once's, again the writers Kazuo Koike/Ryoichi Ikegami.

Have done another masterpiece.

The drawings are a work of art and wish was in colors.

Kazuo Koike has become one of my all time favorite comic book writers. Yes, I know that manga is not exactly the same thing as a comic book, but it is in the same ballpark in terms of juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence that goes all the way back to the tomb of Menna, an ancient Egyptian scribe, painted over 3,200 years ago. Of course like so many the first of Koike's works that I read was "Lone Wolf and Cub," illustrated by Goseki Kojima. From there I went to their "Samurai Executioner" and am currently waiting patiently for the next volume of their "Path of the Assassin." I have also read "Lady Snowblood," written by Koike with art by Kazuo Kamimura, so I have been exploring some of his other work with other artists. In that regard, "Crying Freeman," illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami, is decidedly different from all of the magna written by Koike that I have read so to date.

"Crying Freeman" is the story of Yo Hinomura, an assassin of the 108 Dragons, a Chinese Mafia organization. How a Japanese potter came to be the deadliest assassin of a Chinese crime against his will is explained in Volume 1 as we learn why Freeman cries every time he kills for his masters. Most of this 404-page volume is devoted to the 17-chapter story of "Mr. Yo," but there are also the first two chapters of the second major story, "Falling Blossoms, Flowing Water" (Koike and Ikegami mostly do multi-episode stories although there are a few single chapter stories in future volumes). We begin with Emu Hino writing in her diary how today she has turned twenty-nine, is still a virgin, but suspects she will be assassinated before her next birthday because she witnessed a murder and say the killer's face clearly. The killer also told her his name, so the young artist is pretty sure he is going to kill her, but before he does she vows Mr. Yo will have to make her a woman first. That is the intriguing set up for the story and a whole lot of knife throwing and blood letting.

This book follows the original right-to-left orientation, including what is described as "an entirely new and faithful translation," and the parental advisory for explicit content is no joke because this is adult graphic fiction The modern setting of "Crying Freeman" (originally published in 1986) makes it markedly different from Koike's other work, but I also found myself thinking that Ikegami's art carries more of the load than in those other manga. I say this even though I can think of lots of sections in "Lone Wolf and Cub" and those other manga where Kojima's artwork does the same thing. But "Crying Freeman" really emphasizes the visual elements to the point that it clearly a manga that aspires to be an anime, with loads of sound effects providing a sound track to the artwork.

Even without making a comparison to Koike's more historical magna it becomes clear that "Crying Freeman" revels in the fantastic, and not just with the propensity for people to want to fight in the nude, with or without full body tattoos. I am currently working my way through Volume 3 in the series, so I can say that from my perspective Volume 1 is far and away the best in the series. The reason for this is simply that the whole premise laid out in the story of "Mr. Yo" is abandoned in the next couple of stories, taking us farther and farther away from the rationale for the title character's distinctive name. I found the setup rather interesting (amazing what you can do with acupuncture needles), so I was surprised that Koike and Ikegami would abandon it to go in a significantly different direction. The results are at least a level below Koike's best work, but that still makes it pretty interesting.