サーチアンドデストロイ 1

サーチアンドデストロイ [Search and Destroy] #1

by Atsushi Kaneko, カネコ アツシ

「捜し出し、破壊しろ!!」

手塚治虫の名作『どろろ』を大胆にアレンジした、カネコアツシ渾身のSF異形譚がここに開幕!!

内戦後――兵士や労働力として大量に生産されたクリーチャーと呼ばれるロボットが街に溢れ、
あるものは路上に、あるものは裏社会に身を置き、市民との軋轢を生んでいた。
ある夜、盗みを働きヤクザクリーチャーに捕らえられた孤児ドロの前に、一見、
人間ともクリーチャーともつかない少女が現れる。
獣の毛皮を身にまとい、怒りに満ちた眼差しで親玉キックに襲いかかる少女。
その機械の四肢には、最強の武器が装備されていた……!

手塚治虫生誕90周年記念マンガ書籍「テヅコミ」にて
掲載された『サーチアンドデストロイ』が待望の単行本化!

Genres: Manga, Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Japan, Cyberpunk, Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2019

About the author

Atsushi Kaneko (カネコアツシ, Kaneko Atsushi) es un mangaka japonés nacido en Sakata, prefectura de Yamagata.

Reviews

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best visualisations of a cyberpunk world I've seen in comics. The designs and art are topnotch.

This book feels like it's what Dark Horse's Cyberpunk 2020 comics wish they were (and should've been).

[Urbon Adamsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

PT Assim que comecei a ler este mangá, reconheci de imediato a arte familiar de Atsushi Kaneko, o mesmo mangaká de "Deathco", obra que já tinha começado a ler no passado. O seu traço é inconfundível e encaixa na perfeição neste tipo de história.

Já apreciava o seu trabalho em "Deathco", mas aqui está ainda melhor. O enredo é ainda mais cativante, elevando a experiência de leitura.

Com tudo isto, o resultado é um excelente mangá, cuja história, ao que parece, será contada em três volumes.

--

EN As soon as I started reading this manga, I immediately recognized Atsushi Kaneko's familiar artwork. He is the same mangaka behind "Deathco", a work I had previously started reading. His style is unmistakable and fits perfectly with this type of story.

I already admired his work in "Deathco", but here it’s even better. The plot is even more engaging, enhancing the reading experience.

All in all, this is an excellent manga, with a story that, as far as I can tell, will be told in three volumes.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast-paced action thriller wherein a cyborg with lethal prosthetics hunts down the forty-eight robots who stole and divided up her organs and body parts.

It's a retelling of Osamu Tezuka's Dororo series, but set in the far future instead of the distant past. I don't believe I've read Dororo so I'm going to see if my local library will order the omnibus edition.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Prologue -- Introduction. Pretty Hate Machine / Frederico Anazlone -- Chapters 1-5

[Rory Wilding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I can acknowledge the monumental influence he had on the manga and anime industry, very rarely have I read much Osamu Tezuka, with the exception of some chapters from arguably his iconic creation Astro Boy. If anything, I’m more interested in modern manga creators who put their own spin on Tezuka’s manga, such as Naoki Urasawa writing and drawing Pluto, which is based on a specific story arc from Astro Boy. In the case of Search and Destroy by Atsushi Kaneko, it is a cyberpunk retelling of Tezuka’s Dororo.

Transitioning the source material’s original setting from feudal Japan to a dystopian future where mercenary robots known as "creatures" serve the human elite and victimize the city's scrabbling, desperate masses. When an orphan thief named Doro bears witness to the violent death of one of these creatures at the hands of a mysterious girl named Hyaku in a stinking animal hide that conceals deadly cybernetic implants, Doro hopes to befriend the stranger, who seems hellbent on revenge.

Opening with a prologue with a man running through a blizzard holding onto a baby, the rest of the first chapter is a showcase of the futuristic dystopian city. As for Hyaku herself, she is only revealed at the end of the first chapter, though she makes a strong first impression as she unleashes blades out of her cybernetic arms to hack-and-slash some yakuza and pull out a boss’s tongue.

For the first half of this volume, it is pure cyberpunk action with an emphasis on “punk”. Best known for Bambi and Her Pink Gun, Atsushi Kaneko brings his punk aesthetic to his sci-fi debut that mixes familiar cyberpunk tropes with a European edge as despite the futuristic Japanese setting, there is iconography that resembles the Soviet Union and characters that look like they could pop out of a Mœbius comic. Despite its stark black-and-white presentation, there is graphic detail to how Kaneko draws his action sequences in how Hyaku slashes the villains throughout with their mechanical innards spewing out of their bodies.

Halfway through the volume, we start to get answers as the story goes back in time to see Hyaku’s upbringing in the snowbound woods with the older Tsukumo. From a youngling wanting to know what life is like in the city, much to the reluctance of her guardian, to growing up with the truth that her body was disassembled and taken by multiple creatures from all directions, we see where her present state of rage comes from. Considering the protagonist of Dororo is born severely disfigured and received artificial limbs, updating this concept to a cyberpunk setting is very clever in how humanity and machinery are blurred together in the future.

While there is some world-building, regarding a civil war that happened years ago, the story at this point is more fixated in Hyaku’s path of vengeance, which will be exciting to see where it goes as like its central protagonist, Search and Destroy makes a strong first impression.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Search and Destroy is Atsushi Kaneko's reimagining of the legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka's Dororo, a story about a malformed rōnin and a young thief. Where the original was set firmly in feudal Japan with a heaping dose of dark fantasy, Kaneko's vision is that of a dystopian future filled with mercenary androids and deadly cybernetic implements. The story centers around a girl who had her body parts taken from her, and now she seeks revenge on those who have taken form her as she assembles her whole again.

It's a brutal bit of dystopian fiction, filled with all manner of body horror and violence, but a riveting read from start to finish. Hyaku makes for a hate-filled protagonist who is justifiably angry and imposing her deadly will against all foes. Aided by a scientist named Tsukumo who fits her new prosthetics and a kid named Doro who is a talented thief, Hyaku's adventures here are every bit as great as any revenge thriller can be, and Kaneko's realization of the cyberpunk setting is masterfully achieved with the artwork.

Eager to check out the next volume when it's released.

[Remxo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal notes: Excellent cyberpunk story, first of three vols. Great looking (digital) art, the lettering is good too. Federico Anzalone's introduction offers some context into Kaneko's work and inspirations: Charles Burns, punk and post-punk aesthetics and music. Would recommend to readers of Western comics who like Daniel Warren Johnson, Paul Pope...

[Jeik Dion · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'aime tellement le travail de ce mangaka. Je l'ai découvert il y a quelques années avec son manga Tarantino-Lynchien : Bambi and her pink Gun, et depuis, je suis accro. Search and Destroy est un espèce de remake/hommage/relecture du manga classique; Dororo, du légendaire Osamu Tezuka. Le récit original se situait dans un japon féodal qui a maintenant été remplacé par un pays fictif qui rappelle un genre de Russie post guerre civile cyber-punk. J'ai bien hâte de voir si Kaneko va s'approcher des thèmes de l'identité de genre comme l'avais fait Tezuka précédemment. Bien hâte de lire la suite. Je conseille à n'importe qui, qui s'intéresse au cyberpunk ou au manga de science-fiction
pour adulte.

[Jennifer Lunde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome to the post-apocalyptic, entirely genderbent, weirdly wonderful "Dororo" adaptation that is "Search and Destroy." I am a dyed-in-the wool horror/sf fan and a nut for all things "Dororo" in particular, so spoilers and references ahoy!

The first thing you should probably know is that this manga is in Japanese and is not currently available in English. Japanese is not my first language (or even my second...) so I'm writing this review in English. If you're a horror fan and looking to get into reading Japanese, this is not a terrible place to start. The reading level is generally easier than the other two existing manga adaptations: the original, and currently running faithful-to-source version. It is conceptually much darker than either. Every panel means something, even in the gloriously bloody and violent shootouts that the hero stumbles into now and again. The mangaka, Kaneko Atsushi, shows clear familiarity with the original in every
choice he makes, but he does not tell the story in the same way. Not even close.

And what is "Dororo's" story, anyway? Well, it's about a corrupt leader (Kagemitsu Daigo) that sacrifices their child's body parts to demonic/evil forces in exchange for power. The dispossessed child comes under the care of a doctor (Jukai) and miraculously survives with the support of synthetic-cum-cybernetic parts. The signature image of the hero is swords embedded in the elbow joints--sword arms. The child gets many names (read the novels if you don't believe me), but the one that sticks is usually Hyakkimaru.

Hyakkimaru goes on a quest to kill the demons and recover his body. He encounters Dororo, an orphan and a thief, that illustrates and teaches the difference between being whole and being human. (In most adaptations, Hyakkimaru is male and Dororo is female. This version swaps their genders, to interesting effect.) Endings are divergent; Osamu Tezuka, the original creator, abandoned the work. Aside from these essential story elements, all the rest is fair game for adaptation. Kaneko Atsushi's first major adaptation shift is to steal a bit from the protagonists' names - Hyakkimaru becomes Hyakki, losing the gendered -maru for boys' names, and Dororo becomes just plain Doro. Bold move, considering the title of "Dororo" is a pun on the word "thief."

This world's miracle doctor is a survivalist that lives in the middle of nowhere. When Hyakki is abandoned in snow (flashbacks to Dororo and her mother, who died in a blizzard in the original anime, geek points +1), the doctor finds the genderless creature and builds her a body out of creechi parts, swords, and pointed hooks for feet. In this world, there are humans and creechi (obvious pun on "creature"). Humans are considered superior, but many humans will sell or exchange parts for money or status upgrades, or out of necessity.

Doro(ro) hangs around a creechi that has Deiki the mud demon's character design; the creechi is obsessed with devouring things and has even wired in a human tongue so that he can get more flavor out of what he eats. While creechi do take and install human body parts in this story repeatedly, this is very illegal. By the same token, selling body parts is also illegal, but the logic (naturally) does not work the other way--that is, humans are free to replace faulty body parts with mechanical equivalents whenever they wish. The effects of this policy cause a lot of moral and ethical gray areas; what makes someone human becomes a lot more open to interpretation. There is also a robust police force that gets itself involved when Hyakki starts leaving a bloody trail in her wake. In most "Dororo" adaptation worlds, Hyakkimaru must take great pains to blend in, but in this one there's almost no need--survivors of war have had their limbs replaced by parts, and the robots created for labor gradually adapt and bring in more human parts for themselves. For once, Hyakki blends right in--Doro, by being fully human, is a lot more unusual in this world.

Anyway...The corrupt creechi is sick of Doro stealing and orders him killed. When Hyakki shows up to demand her tongue back, the boss goes wild, bullets fly, much property destruction is done, but in the end Hyakki manages to rip her own tongue out of the criminal's dead head and reinstall it. (Despite the discrepancy in law enforcement, human body parts are treated very similarly to mechanical parts. This is the gimmick. Frankenstein-like body horror abounds.) The minions holding Doro are also cut down, with the grossest sound effects ever, so Doro manages to get away.

Hyakki immediately tests her new (old? used?) tongue out by stealing cupcakes. It is completely adorable and somehow not at all out of place. Doro manages to lift a wallet, then smells Hyakki's odd smell and locates her at the cupcake stand. This is probably the thing I appreciate most about this adaptation: Hyakki is gendered lightly female, but is allowed to be as gross, unkempt, and disgusting as she damn well pleases. You be you, Hyakki!

I also appreciate that it is not just the genders that are reversed, here, but the spoken registers as well. Doro speaks a variant of Kansaiben (read: the most commonly spoken form of Japanese; it's big-city style, Tokyo specifically) while Hyakki speaks in an odd sort of dialect-less speech that was probably communicated to her through her out-in-the-sticks foster father. Some usages strike me as a little old-fashioned, but this is the first time I've been able to understand Doro(ro) clearly at all in manga adaptations of this story. I like this change because the communication frustration has usually been on Hyakkimaru's side, but in this version, Hyakki doesn't care if anyone can understand her or not, beyond such blunt utterances of things like "give it." (This was probably the case for Dororo in other adaptations as well. First time I'm really picking up on on that, though.)

During Hyakki and Doro's first real encounter, Doro has stolen a valuable part from an art gallery; the initial heist was led by this world's Itachi (a petty criminal that betrayed Doro's father) and a woman whose identity is not immediately clear. Turns out this is another of Hyakki's body parts, so when she shows up to demand it, Doro offers it willingly and starts to talk about the war...the last war, when the creechi were created, robots took over cities and people started selling organs like computer parts. It's not quite the world of The Terminator movies, but the parallels are certainly present.

Doro does almost all the talking in this exchange. It is not revealed if Hyakki is even bothering to listen. The important thing is Doro's rage and loneliness; he will literally spill his guts to anyone that is not rotten to the core. When he proposes an alliance of sorts (as Doro always does), Hyakki aims the left sword arm right at his eyes and says, "Don't follow me." (Female Hyakki is identical to male Hyakkmaru in all the ways that matter and I love it.)

But Doro does. Because Doro(ro) always does. And so, the adventure begins.

Hyakki's past is also treated in this volume, and it is a whole mess of political intrigue and conspiratorial spy rings wrapped up in some pretty mucked up ethics. The doctor that raises Hyakki does a lot of digging into her origins. Out of kindness, he tells her that her family died in the war and that she lost her limbs in an explosion (throw shade on "Black Jack," geek points + 2). Neither of those things are true, and while he's not able to report much on her family, he is clear about one thing: the creechi stole Hyakki's body. Why? Something to do with her DNA. (In the old version, Hyakkimaru was similarly afflicted with some kind of magical protection that attracts demons.) Jukai encourages her to move fast and break things in order to restore what's hers before going out in a blaze of glory.

When Hyakki and Doro meet, she's fresh off the grief of losing Jukai, and the rage is raw. All emotions are raw in this manga. The options are to be repulsed or drawn in--I don't see any others available.

This review is very long.

TL;DR: Give this mangaka your money, especially if you're a Dororo fan. You will be pleased you did. Four volumes are planned; two are out. Stay tuned.

[Rahul Nadella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a terrific reimagining of a classic manga and one of the best manga releases in general this year. The art goes a long way in building the dark and grimy tone Kaneko is seeking to establish. The backgrounds are largely dirty and sleazy with little attempt to make the characters easy on the eyes. The pairing of Hyaku and the young thief Doro is obviously a driving force of the story and does a great job of capturing the spirit of the original Dororo. The sci-fi setting gives Kaneko free rein to explore themes such as class divide and fascism. With much of manga aimed towards escapism from the outside world, it’s fascinating to see a manga creator channelling his real-world frustrations into his work. An easy recommendation to both Tezuka fans and those who appreciate top notch sci-fi manga. I was thrilled by the manga and can’t wait for the next volumes.

[Boris Nonveiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bonbon cyberpunk

[Norman Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

2025 Eisner Award finalist - Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia

This is a retelling of Dororo (1967) by Osamu Tezuka, set in a dystopian future instead of feudal Japan. I've never read Dororo so I can't comment on how well this compares to the original. As it's own thing it's a brutal cross between Blade Runner and John Wick with artwork that reminds me somewhat of Frank Miller with a bit of Jack Kirby thrown in. There's little dialog but interestingly lettered (by Phil Christie) sound effects permeate the book. Both the story and art are dark and frenetic. It takes a while to get to the back story of the woman with most of her body replaced by prosthetics, but by the end, the scenario is set and readers know they're in for a wild ride. Fantagraphics has done another wonderful job with a quality book design. I tried reading this as an ebook first, but the creative panel layouts make reading this on paper a better option, I think.

[LaPommequirougit · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://lapommequirougit.com/2021/03/...

Pour être honnête, je n’attendais vraiment pas grand-chose de ce titre. Je l’ai acheté plus par curiosité, car c’était une nouveauté et que j’aime tester et lire toutes les nouveautés mangas. Pourtant, ce manga m’a plu, bien plus que je ne l’aurais pensé.

On est dans la ville de Hachisuka. Cette dernière est remplie de robot. Nous y découvrons, Doro, un petit orphelin qui vole ce qu’il peut pour survivre. Alors qu’il s’est fait prendre la main dans le sac par les robots yakuza et qu’il est dans de salle drap, une fille qui n’est ni humaine, ni un robot, passe devant lui et tue tous les robots.

Cette dernière l’intrigue et il n’a pas l’intention de la laisser partir. Il décide donc de la suivre, mais il va rapidement comprendre pourquoi elle est emplie de colère. La vérité est parfois effrayante…

L’histoire est dès le départ très intrigante, de par cette jeune femme qui débarque de nulle part, dont on ne sait rien, ni ce qu’elle est, ni le pourquoi des massacres qu’elle créer. Pourtant, quand on arrive à la fin du tome et qu’on a les révélations qu’on attendait tant, on n’a qu’une envie, avoir la suite entre les mains.

En bref, un premier tome qui m’a vraiment fait forte impression. Je suis déjà impatiente de voir ce que la suite nous réserve, car cette jeune fille est vraiment intrigante et captivante ! 😉

[Tyler Spragg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat modern day cyberpunk take on Tezuka’s classic, a more serious tone, Search and Destroy is an exciting concept. The artwork is beautiful, but the characters so far don’t hold much of the same love-hate bond I loved from Dororo. I’m still excited to reach the end and see how this reimagining compares!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review in Booklist Magazine.

Read more graphic novel reviews at The Graphic Library.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could see this getting better, but so far, it's pretty meh, even the art.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Fantagraphics for an advanced copy of this new manga that updates a classic tale from the past and brings it to a dark future, one that looks very much like the results of the mistakes we are making today.

The future is looking dark. Real dark. And dangerous. People seem to enjoy leaders who like building monuments to themselves. People seem more than willing to sell their their souls for power. And violence seems to be more and more accepted in life. Search and Destroy Volume 1 is a reimagining of a manga tale Dororo written and illustrated by the God of Manga, Osamu Tezuka. This version by, Atsushi Kaneko, takes the original story and turns it up to eleven, moving the story to a future that seems on days away, and adding a little bit of the ultraviolence, that seems to surround us all.

The story takes place in a future city loaded with monuments to the powerful, and with giant cars that fill the streets. The powerful use cybernetic enhanced thugs to keep the human masses in line, leading to a world of fear, and quick savage violence. A young thief is about to meet a sad end when the thief is saved by something wearing a an animal hide that stinks to high heaven. The thief survives, surrounded by bodies, and tries to team-up with this creature, something the creature ignores. This creature looks like a young girl, with lots of cybernetic blades added, and seems to be on a quest, a quest that will lead to a lot more bodies before ending.

A familiarity with the story will Dororo would probably be helpful, just to get a gist of what is going on. The story might be a little hard to get into without it. That said I enjoyed this story, and especially the art, which does a lot of the work in the story. Manga with a lot of European influence. Also a mix of post-Soviet landscapes, statues to long dead icons, along with a strong feeling that there criminal aristocracy that controls everything. Everything is big the cars, the bad guys, the violence. However everything is really beautifully rendered, especially the action scenes which have a particular flow. And a few of the characters might seem familiar from other media. I swear the bad guy here is Zorg from The Fifth Element. And I think I recognized a few others, which again add to the story.

I enjoyed this and I am looking forward to other volumes in this series. A little odd, but a good story, that holds the reader, especially with the really good art work. I am excited to read more.

[Sheldon Wiebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaneko's reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Dororo is a punk rock rager that takes the tale of the samurai searching for his body parts and twisting it into the cyberpunk tale of a girl - whose body parts were stolen from her as a child (and replaced with prosthetics) - searching out those persons and destroying to get her body parts back.

This is not a manga for the faint-hearted - or even anyone used to the kinds of violence seen in other manga. This is a brutal/beautiful reimagining that takes Hyaku for her forest home - where the scientist Tsukumo has been fitting her with new prosthetics as she ages - to the city, where she encounters a kid named Doro, who claims to be one of the best thieves around (he knows the city and environs like the back of his hand).

Though she tells him to stop following her, when he's injured when she reappropriates her eyes, she takes him home and his wounds are tended to.

It's a small revelation since she's described as a "pretty hate machine."

After her sojourn to the city, Kaneko takes us back to her life before she learned the truth of why she's mostly machine. Events transpire to set her rage in motion.

Kaneko's art takes a leap from his previous brush pen work to a more defined and detailed style (his first work in digital) and his storytelling is superb.

This is a stunning piece of work and a unique epic,

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lavishly illustrated in dark, somewhat wild tones, "Search and Destroy" introduces us to Hyaku, a cyborg looking to reclaim the stolen parts of her human body.

This manga takes place in a future Japan, a place still rebuilding after decades of war fought by both humans and "kreach," synthetic beings designed for slaughter. Hyaku resembles a kreach but is human at her core, animalistic even. Grunting, wild, draped in old pelts to mask her scent, she has embarked on a quest of revenge, one that sees her shred kreach and human henchmen alike with synthetic-alloy blades.

The art is excellent, and the storytelling is solid, both in the present tense and flashbacks that explain how Hyaku came to be who she was. Hyaku is a tough character to spotlight, though. She's largely monsyllabic in the early going, although she does eventually gain a human sidekick to offer an audience surrogate.

More than that, she outclasses any of the enemies she's up against, slashing through them like Claremont-era Wolverine. It's hard to feel like she's vulnerable in this first volume, which robs the story of some of its drama. Still, it's a compelling setting with exquisite art, and it does promise some gonzo possibilities ahead.

[Vinayak Hegde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Search an Destroy (Vol I) is an inventive reimagining of Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo by Atsushi Kaneko, infused with cyberpunk aesthetics and set in a gritty, post-human dystopian world. The story feels like Ex Machina meets John Wick - violent, stylish, and emotionally charged. The protagonist, a young woman whose body parts have been stolen and repurposed by forty-eight part-human, part-machine "creatures", embarks on a relentless quest for reclamation.

Kaneko’s artwork is stunning, perfectly capturing the dark, neon-soaked atmosphere and the raw intensity of the narrative. The visual storytelling is sharp and immersive, though I personally felt that the inclusion of sound effects (in words) within the panels slightly disrupted the otherwise cinematic narrative flow.

It would be incredible would be as an animated film- something in the spirit of Love, Death & Robots, where its striking visuals and visceral action could fully come alive on screen. This is the first of the 3-part trilogy.

[Clint · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
A slick cyberpunk reimagining of Tezuka’s Dororo, filled with gorgeously stylized violence and big chunky sound effects and quirky scoundrels to root for and against. This opening volume bombastically introduces Hyaku and her hunt to repossess all the original parts stolen from her now cybernetically-repaired body. Street rat sidekick Doro gets an introduction too, plus a few targets temporarily enjoying use of her stolen parts. Kaneko’s line work is incredible, though occasionally there’s so much going on in the black-and-white end result that my mostly-Western-comic-reading eyes could have used some color to distinguish hectic scenes a bit. Still, this is an impressive looking comic telling a thrilling reimagining of a classic manga.

[Tyler Ookami]

Quite fun, I suppose. It's nice to see Kaneko officially translated, but this work, a SF retelling of Tezuka's Dororo, is entertaining enough. Very much in the vein of Aeon Flux or Ghost in the Shell (the OG shoot em manga, not the more dramatically inclined animated franchise it spawned) where it's nonstop action but with a complex SF world we're only kind of privy to in the background. Haven't read the original Dororo since high school but there seems to be more Blade Runner than Dororo here. More like Masamune Shirow than Tezuka but not as wildly incoherent as much of Shirow's work. Still, I like cyborgs, I like gore, I like any excuse to look at Kaneko's drawings. So this will suffice until we get the more overtly experimental works in English editions.

[Philip McCarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

So freaking cool. The artwork is super slick, the fights are phenomenal, and the plot is such a fascinating reimagining of Dororo. I'm totally sold on this story and the world. I feel like I'm reading something from the olden days of manga given the art style and plotting. Basically, a woman has had her body chopped up into 48 pieces which have been given to robots who are chasing a little bit of humanity, such as taste and sight. We then have our main character, Hyaku, who is hunting down the different robots to regain her human body parts. There's also the fact that the world is currently recovering from a civil war where the robots and humans fought side by side, but now the robots have been discarded because they're no longer seen as helpful. This is top tier cyberpunk action.

[Travis Duke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't explore manga much anymore but this really caught my eye when I ordered at my branch. I guess it is a remake of an older classic manga Dororo, which I might check out. The art for this book is top notch amazing, I cant say enough good things about the line work, stunning. This a cyberpunk story set in the near future where humans and robots don't like each other. The main character Hyaku, is filled with rage and a total bad ass. It has a great story line I wont spoil but she in on the hunt and killing robots/creatures and wont stop until she collects all her goods. Sad I have to wait for vol.2, I need more.

[Casey Halvorsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Fantagraphics for this arc!!

5/5 stars

This had so much excitement and rage packed into 100 pages!! The story was engaging and I was invested right from the first page. The art was exquisitely done, in both beautiful and at times disgusting imagery drawn with precision and deep emotions. I can't wait to read the rest of this, and will absolutely be looking into the original work as well!!

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really cool. Kaneko's reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Dororo takes the classic tale giving it a cyberpunk bent. This girl with deadly robotic limbs is seeking out the 48 people who stole body parts from her. It's very graphic and violent and I'm here for it. But that's not all there is, as you feel for this girl as you see her childhood and how she protects this street urchin. The art is great too.

[Richard Thornley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is probably a really great book. The story is fast-paced and action-packed, the art is quite fitting to the cyberpunk setting and themes, and if you're not afraid of a little violence, well, there's lots of violence. I quite enjoyed where the story was going, but, like most of the manga I've read (or tried to read) before, I just couldn't follow it. It wasn't for me, ultimately, but maybe it will be for you.

[Caleste Hawthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. I hadn't heard of Dororo before so this cyberpunk reimainging was really dope to me. Especially the perspectives of the creatures that have taken her body parts. I really didn't know what to expect from this story and was really pleasantly surprised. Most definitely enough to try to find the next volume.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on Dororo by Osamu Tezuka. The art is clean and I like the way that the body parts were replaced with cybernetics giving it a modern, somewhat dystopian setting and making it different enough to the original to be compelling. The reason for the 48 body parts being distributed was not really explained or that logical (at least not how it was very briefly explained in this volume.

[Florent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une lecture intéressante, le personnage principal est agréable à suivre et donne envie de lire la suite. L'univers et le dessin sont réussis. Les scènes d'action sont parfois difficiles à lire. La démarche derrière cette œuvre est inspirante.

[Madison Maler (anxious.librarian) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never read manga but I was gifted a free copy by the publisher and decided to give it a try. It was really good! I’m really invested in this story! And the art is just so impressive and cinematic.