April’20 Oddpoll ! (Patreon)

Out of the thematic series this is probably the female trio closest to my heart.

- Gally/Alita from Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita by  Yukito Kishiro 

Gunnm is quite simply my favorite manga series, Yukito Kishiro managed the rare feat of nailing action, style, characters and world building in their own rights and all together. The original series is rather short and pretty much impeccably paced, with a gritty 90s take on post-planetary disaster Sci-fi and a traditional but soundly treated core theme of identity being jumbled by technology making flesh obsolete. It’s fantastic, I enjoyed the movie for what it was by in terms of atmosphere it’s far removed from the manga, I’d definitely recommend going back to the source. As for the follow-up series, they didn’t manage to replicate the balance of the original unfortunately. 

Gunnm: Last order shows signs of fantastic world-building on the scale of the solar system, hinting at an evolution of the core theme towards life becoming meaningless when the last frontier of mortality is overcome. However it is weighed down by the pretty dumb tournament premise and quite frankly rather silly shit being shoved in(Vampires. Yes.). It’s still an OK read, the art is cool and the zany space stuff is entertaining to some degree, but it’s not legendary like the initial series was.

Gunnm: Mars Chronicles is a mess. Gunnm has always had some uncomfortable, grotesque elements (Nova’s Gallery of live “experiments” etc.) but it underlined the horror that the characters were experiencing. MC doesn’t really have characters you give a shit about, so it comes off as a directionless carnival of weirdness, not my thing =O

Read and watch!

Nikaido – Dorohedoro by Hayashida Q

I fucking love Dorohedoro, for reasons that are entirely different from how I feel about Gunnm. There is world building, but it’s insane. There are characters, but they are all violent psychopaths or at least very complacent. It all works, somehow, towards building an incredibly fun and light-ish atmosphere with very endearing (violent and psychopathic) characters, some would say with simple quirks that are always showcased in different and fun ways as the convoluted plot moves along. Visually it makes up for technical weakness by being very involved and sincere, you can feel the love of Hayashida Q for the world she created in the art, I enjoy it a lot.

All you need to know is that Humans and sorcerers live in different “dimensions” but sorcerers travel to the human dimension to use them as guinea pigs to test their skills. Caiman is a dude whose head was turned into that of a lizard by such an experiment, he also lost his memory in the process. Together with his mate Nikaido they slaughter invading sorcerers to find answers.

I chose Nikaido because I have already drawn NOI, and also because while NOI is the supreme tank waifu she doesn’t have as much of a forward role in the manga. Nikaido is absolutely lovely on all accounts and a great candidate. She’s a spry, fit girl whose interactions with Main character Caiman are sweet and wholesome. She gruesomely kills people too, but then again everybody does.

The Anime is… good! So far (ep.6) it replicates the atmosphere very well, and what it loses in grit (3d models are pretty clunky at times, outside of the surprisingly effective action direction) it gains in sophistication in depicting the environments, something the author is somewhat conservative with.

Read it and watch!

And to conclude…

Adèle Blanc-sec by Jacques Tardi

I know she isn’t much of a contender, but I’m taking the opportunity to talk about her as she is one of my favorite heroines in all of media. Also she’s hot so it’s not stunt casting =)

Adèle is a dilettante/Journalist living in Paris in the 1910s. The city is full of weirdos on separate endeavours that intersect, meaningfully or not, across successive episodes with occult elements and lots of rambling. She is a unique female main character in that she is a kind of a dick. Not a bitch, not an asshole, a dick. She tends to stumble in and out of situations, not out of stupidity or misplaced heroism, but a general sense of half-reluctant curiosity, she just kind of wants to know what’s going on, but really doesn’t care either way in the end. It’s not bitchiness as in “Ugh…this again, time to be a hero I guess”, when she acts it can just be because she’s pissed at someone trying to kill her, When a situation is resolved she enjoys having a laugh at the humiliated culprit, it’s all very dickish and petty.

I struggle to convey that unique quality, especially when translated books are probably extremely hard to find, but a few years ago director Luc Besson sponsored an Adèle Blanc-Sec movie that was pretty decent and got a good reception outside of France. Unfortunately the dickishness of Adèle is much less pronounced in favor of a more Snarky/Cynical take, but it did an ok job of showcasing the rich atmosphere. 

The author is a legend with an obsession with Paris and WW1 material, yes, that’s where I found some inspiration for my great war wives =)

Have at it!