Osamu Tezuka is widely regarded as "the godfather of manga" due to his work on beloved titles like Astro Boy and Buddha. Tezuka's work has even inspired modern reimaginings, like the recent graphic novel Unico: Awakening. Now Fantagraphics is bringing another of these Tezuka reboots to American shores, Atsushi Kaneko's Search & Destroy.
Check out the slideshow gallery below for an exclusive preview of this upcoming graphic novel:
Search & Destroy is based on Tezuka's classic manga series Dororo, which revolves around a ronin and an orphaned thief who join forces to track down the former's organs, which were traded away to demons in exchange for victory on the battlefield. Search & Destroy takes that unusual pairing and completely reinvents the story as a futuristic cyberpunk thriller.
Here's Fantagraphics' official description of Search & Destroy:
This is a tale of rage. Rage against hypocrisy, injustice, exploitation, and the wrongs done to a child who grew into a righteous killer….Complete in three volumes, Search and Destroy transplants the vengeful action of Dororo from feudal Japan into a dystopian future where mercenary robots known as "creatures" serve the human elite and victimize the city's scrabbling, desperate masses. The violent death of one of these creatures connects an orphaned thief named Doro with a mysterious girl in a stinking animal hide that conceals deadly cybernetic implants. Who is this mysterious girl? How is she killing, one by one, the city's most twisted and powerful creatures?
“Search & Destroy is not only one of the best sci-fi manga of recent years but also one of the most visually rich and distinctive works of graphic storytelling in any genre or language,” said Fantagraphics Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds in a statement. “Kaneko-sensei populates a stunning, high-contrast setting that echoes postwar Cuba as much as Tokyo with an unforgettable cast of scrappy heroes and skin-crawling monsters on a nonstop ride full of action and suspense. This sly retelling updates the rebellious '60s spirit of the original Dororo to the equally tumultuous 2020s to breathe new life into a timeless tale.”
Search & Destroy Vol. 1 is available in bookstroes now. Click here to order a copy on Amazon.
In other comic book news, Marvel is shifting to the New Republic era with its latest Star Wars series, and the TMNT and Naruto franchises are crossing over.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/search-destroy-osamu-tezuka-dororo-fantagraphics