Akira Nikaido, the school slacker, is suddenly thrust in a battle to restore the balance between the human and shadow world!
Creative Talent
Writer/Artist: Kaili Sorano
Translated by: N/A
Adapted by: N/A
What They Say
Akira Nikaido is a typical slacker high school student who thinks he has a normal life - until a mysterious man called Shirogane appears and tells him to meet him at the school that night. He is skeptical but goes anyway... and gets attacked by a shadow monster! Shirogane convinces him that the balance between the human world and the shadow world has been distorted, and that Akira must become a shin - a creature of the shadow world - in order to help restore the balance.
The Review
Packaging:
Before you get the idea that this is some weird yaoi title, the two boys gracing the cover are actually the human and shadow forms of the main character. Front and center we have the human version of Akira in his school uniform, and hovering to his left is shadow Akira wearing white shirt, black vest, and an ominous expression with one of his hunting knives in hand. There's a bit of fog in the lower foreground, and the background is simply a hazy gray and white pattern. The title logo in bold red and black letters with the word "Factor" inverted below "Monochrome" is placed towards the center. The volume number and mangaka credits run along the bottom of the cover in black lettering outlined in red. The Tokyopop logo in red and white is aligned vertically at the top right edge.
On the back cover, we have the same gray and white background as the front. At the top is the title logo, and the left half of the cover is taken up by the story synopsis in red lettering while the right is taken up by a black-and-white illustration of Shirogane lifted from the manga. At the bottom are ISBN, genre, and age rating icons.
The print quality, binding, and materials are satisfactory. Chapter title splash art is included for the four chapters of this volume. However, there might be a page missing between pages 134 and 135. Pages 135 and 136 appear to be bonus pages and don't actually have anything to do with the main story, but from the page layout, the bonus material seems a continuation of end of the chapter, making things somewhat confusing (although the mangaka might have done that on purpose). Extras include three 4-panel comic strips, a two-page character profile on Akira, an afterword from the mangaka, and ads for other Tokyopop releases.
Artwork:
I'm quite impressed by Sorano's artwork, which is solid all around. He has a nice, clean style, and his inking and use of screentones are excellent, whether detailing a character's hair or depicting the forces of magic. Character designs, which are easy to differentiate, are on the pretty side and of the large-eyed, heart-shaped face variety. Bodies are proportioned realistically, and Sorano pays a lot of attention to hair style for males and females. He likes to switch to very cute chibi versions of his characters when he throws in bits of humor between the action and drama. The kokuchi shadow monsters, which have a sleek reptilian look to them, are simple without being dumpy. Action/fight sequences are well-paced and easy to follow as are the transformation sequences.
Text/Translation:
Signs and books are not translated, and the vast majority of sound effects are not translated. Tokyopop has chosen to change Japanese honorifics to English equivalents in this translation. They use a decent variation of lettering styles, but the font size gets really, really small in a number of places, including most of the Akira Nikaido character profile at the back. A few cultural notes are explained in footnotes, but they don't bother explaining the comic references Akira makes to the anime character Doraemon or to Japanese period piece TV shows.
In regards to the dialogue translation, it is satisfactory for the most part but comes off as awkward in a few spots. For example, just before Shirogane turns Akira into a shin, he's complaining about how troublesome Akira is, and the wording just doesn’t seem to sound right for the urgent situation they’re in.
Content:
Akira Nikaido is a typical slacker high school student. He's constantly cutting classes and seemingly bored with everything. However, all that changes one day when he's confronted by Shirogane, a mysterious gray-haired man with an intense interest in Akira. Shirogane tells Akira to meet him at the high school late that night, and when Akira goes, he finds Shirogane -- and the place overrun with shadow monsters!
A terrifying chase ensues, and Akira plunges into an alternate world, the shadow world, from which the monsters originate. Shirogane manages to pull Akira back, but unfortunately, the damage has been done. Having fallen into the shadow world, Akira is forced to become a shin, a shadow creature. However, becoming a shin means that Akira now has the ability to fight the shadow monsters that attacked him, and with Shirogane's help, they fend off the attacking monsters.
Once the skirmish has ended, Shirogane, who himself is a shin, explains to Akira that the balance between the human and the shadow worlds has been weakened, and that he needs Akira's help to restore the balance. Shirogane's request intrigues Akira, and he agrees to help him.
However, agreeing to help Shirogane leads to all sorts of unforeseen consequences. For instance, in order for Akira to maintain his presence in the human world, he needs Shirogane at his side constantly. And the kokuchi, the shadow monsters invading the human world, have no qualms about dragging innocent bystanders into their fights. Akira's simple life is about to become very complicated very quickly!
Comments:
This is a kind of magical shonen story, complete with an outward transformation (which I find entirely unnecessary) for our hero when he gets ready to fight the bad guys. Plots involving fights with monstrous enemies from an alternate universe have been done to death in the shonen genre so Monochrome Factor doesn’t offer anything new in that respect. However, the mangaka executes his story well enough with his artwork to make it worth checking out, especially if you're looking for something with a simpler storyline. As with most Japanese action stories, there are "systems" and "a world order" that the reader must become familiar with in Monochrome Factor, but the rules involved in this manga are not nearly as complex as, say, Naruto. And fighting is simply fighting about a whole lot of techniques or fancy sword moves that have to be announced with an elaborate name.
Another thing about this story that isn’t very complex is the characters. Akira is fairly one-dimensional as are the other high school students in the story and Shirogane. We don’t get any information on Akira's background, past, or family. We don’t even know exactly what kind of relationship he has with Kengo, his school acquaintance that gets the most page allocation in this volume. The mangaka doesn’t bother telling us much beyond the fact that he’s the school slacker, plain and simple, and then focuses almost entirely on his fight against the encroaching shadow world. No flashbacks and no heavy contemplations about his future.
While keeping things simple is fine, one thing that hasn't yet been touched upon that really needs to be clarified is Shirogane's role in this. He is a shin, which, like the kokuchi, is a creature of the shadow world. While kokuchi supposedly don’t have wills of their own, Shirogane obviously has his own will, and his motivation for preventing the shadow world from overwhelming the human world is as of yet unknown and seems somewhat counterintuitive. After all, if he’s from the shadow world, why should it bother him that his world is expanding?
At any rate, if you're looking for a plot driven action story without a whole lot of character development, you may want to give Monochrome Factor a try.
This title is rated 13+ for swearing and violence.
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