Customer Reviews

Dogs: Bullets & Carnage, Volume 1

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After seeing that the only review on this book was left by someone complaining of it being confusing after reading it, but not the first book in the series, I felt I needed to give my two cents. You can't start watching a movie in the middle then complain that you don't know what's going on. So, let me first stress that even though this is labeled "1" it is not the first book in the series, it is the second, the first is "0".

When you first meet the main characters in Volume 0 you learn about them and a bit of their back-stories but not how they're connected. In this volume that process starts. You have Mihai, the retired assassin. Naoto, a sword wielding girl who's searching for her parents killer. Heine, a genetically altered killer with a bloody past and a deep fear of women. And Badou, a nicotine obsessed informant and Heines occasional partner in crime.

The story is interesting and leaves you wanting more. The art is clean and the fight scenes are pure brilliance. Unique and flowing they offer a clear play by play of the action, not the incomprehensible "page vomit" you get in some manga.

I've found myself addicted after only these two volumes and am eagerly awaiting the next release.

I haven't read the entire volume 1 yet, but I don't need to in orde to tell you that this is a good series to pick up. The line art is very well done, action sequences are extremely interesting, and the story so far is very interesting. Definitely give this series a try.

Dogs is an amazing manga though unless you've read the prequel series then you won't understand much in this volume. The art is amazing and the story once understood is similarly astounding.The only flaw might be it's lack of characterization though even this makes it better as it gives characters a mysterious persona.

This is the first installment of a sequel (or spinoff) to the book published in English as Dogs: Prelude, Vol. 0, and maybe it would have made more sense if I had read that one first. I picked this one up largely because of the cover, which I thought was stylish but badly cluttered, which is a fair approximation of my feelings for the book as a whole.

The stars of Dogs are Heine (short hair, guns) a mentally unstable killer who has Improbable Healing Skills, A Dark Past, and a so-far-unexplained implant in his neck, and his sidekick Badou (long hair, cigarette), an incompetent detective and grocery-store clerk (two great tastes that... make no sense together). Heine is pretty, carries a couple of odd-looking guns, is very good at killing people, and occasionally has extremely dramatic reactions to nothing in particular, which I think is supposed to show his fragile mental state but just gets lost in the general incomprehensibility of the book.

Apparently set in some kind of post-environmental-catastrophe underground city with an Italian influence (like everything else about the book, the details of the setting are not clear), in this volume Our Heros rescue some kids (from a poorly-specified but doubtless unspeakable fate), tick off some mobsters, get repeatedly shot at (and in Heine's case, repeatedly shot), kill many, many people, and have assorted run-ins with various mysterious and / or exceedingly violent people, who dispense cryptic utterances, or try to kill them, or dispense cryptic utterances *while* trying to kill them. And there's also a girl with a very short skirt and a very large sword, who is probably going to be important somehow. It's all terribly cool and stylish, but so far makes very little sense.

Be warned that quite a large dose of suspension of disbelief is required to get through this volume (Badou manages to shoot a dozen heavily-armed mobsters in a small room, without himself getting shot once? With his hands tied behind his back? While tied to an office chair?); it's the sort of story where, when the badnasties have Heine at gunpoint, they always pause just long enough to allow him to get off a sardonic quip and then kick the guns out of their hands. (And then kill them messily, since if you can say anything for Miwa, he doesn't stint on the bloodshed.)

Taken as individual panels, the art is quite nice; spare and high-contrast, with minimal toning. Unfortunately, much of the story is taken up by combat; Miwa's fight scenes are an incomprehensible welter of dramatic poses, sweeping gestures, improbable weaponry, speedlines, gunsmoke, bloodspatter, and hyperbolic gore, in which the actual action is almost impossible to parse. The storyline is similarly convoluted, rapidly but superficially introducing genetically engineered waifs, human trafficking, shady government experiments, gang wars, mysterious advisors and at least four villains (one of whom delights in the improbable name of Melvin Scrooge, which got a snicker from me every time; I'm pretty sure this was not the intended response).

On the whole, this book would have been substantially improved had Miwa's editor made him cut it down to one-fifth as many elements, each given five times the development. As it is, it seems like Miwa is trying to get the setup for the entire series over in one go, so that he can spend the next however-many volumes drawing peoples' faces getting bitten off (one of the tasty treats this volume has in store). If you value style over substance and just haven't had enough death and dismemberment in your life, it might be worth getting Dogs from the library. Otherwise, give it a miss.