BioMega by Tsutomu Nihei

Went and saw Captain America: Civil War today. Now that Deadpool came out, though, I'm just going to keep hoping he'll show up like Spiderman did in that movie. I really gotta stop waiting until Saturday to post these, but re-reading One Piece is just a time suck that I don't want to end. Also, very short review of this manga via a zombie gif:

BioMega by Tsutomu Nihei 

Art and story (c) Tsutomu Nihei

Genre: Seinen
Length: 6 Volumes – 42 Chapters


           The character designs are rather interesting, the faces have a unique look to them, though the most expressive is the character who is a bear, otherwise facial expression isn't very varying.
Everything is suitably distressed and worn looking for the story, and the backgrounds are pretty much all there. As a zombie, more like a strange science fiction version of zombies, story, it is also filled with plenty of gross visuals. Lots of plant-based looking blobs and pustules that are only there to be disgusting and have no other purpose are present. The detailing, though, was a put off for me. All the shading, especially in the environment made everything look really cluttered more than it made it look real. It's good art but it wasn't perfect.
           A virus from Mars is turning people into drones, dead corpses taken over by the disease, and a looming threat of it overwhelming humanity has set several super powers of the world into motion. Each has a different idea on how to fix the problem. One agent is on a recovery mission amid all of this to find a girl who seems to be immune to the virus, but with the drones, her guardian, and the other agencies all against him, things are sure to be bloody.

           Most of the time while I was reading this manga, I had no idea what what going on. Its pretty much just fights but the enemies and their motivations are pretty much never given until the very end. Even then it seems like gibberish. Speaking of the “bad guys” they liked to show up and die in quick succession and couldn't tell the difference between some of them because they were spiky with aprons on. The enemies also tended to get larger and larger until the scale became impossible to visualize, as well, and it just makes no sense how the one guy and a single gun does any damage at all. I know it's there were times it might have been the same guy more than once but I literally cyberpunk, but like I mentioned in the art review, there is almost too much going on at times and the

Side note on this picture: Barf.

clutter makes it hard really see what is happening. About halfway though, as well, the whole planet disappears and turns into a giant umbilical cord floating in space and the zombies are forgotten for a while, but understanding this world is even more confusing than the one before, so… prepare for that turn around. Within which there is a random chapter that I still do not understand where it is supposed to fit into the rest of the narrative. There's always something happening in BioMega but exactly what is going on can sometimes be a chore to understand. Strangely enough, I really liked the main character, Zoichi, a synthetic human who is immune to the virus and super resilient against a beating; he's cool and stoic and shoots a really big gun sometimes but that only goes so far when there are random things happening all the time. Had things been explained more I think I would have liked it better but not by much, and even the action was hard to follow at times. You can only see so many guys heads exploding before you want a little more from the plot. If you wait four volumes to explain anything, by that point I have lost interest. I only finished it because zombie manga are pretty scarce… and Zoichi was pretty bad-ass.





2.5/5 Not enough story to keep interest.

And this thing shows up? What a weird name.