The series has a strong premise, expressive art, and plethora of emotional and awe-inspiring moments, but behind exterior hides weak plot, unexplored setting, and a mountain of unrealized potential.
Discounting interpersonal relations, there are only two overarching story lines: fighting evil superpowered freak Kubo and denuclearization (in the order of importance).
I don?t like Kubo, and would have gone without the shounen-esque villain and concentrated more on actual politics. Yet, even if the author wanted to include supernatural antagonist, it could be done better: instead of the nihilistically evil psychic whose behavior stem from family issues, he could been written as anti-villain. In the thirteenth chapter, Kubo stated that psychic powers work under a system of karmic retribution with good deeds resulting in bad things happen. This idea could become a base of antagonist motivation with Kubo believing that heroes using powers for the betterment of Japan will result in large-scale disasters while his evil deeds (including killing child rapists which is a grayer area) compensated by greater good happening in the world. Therefore, in his mind, regardless of how much dog-kickingly evil he acts, he is a good guy while protagonists are irresponsible villains.
The supernatural setting could have been more fleshed out, especially in a plane of characters. The only named supernatural characters are Riyon and Kubo. That?s it. Despite every human supposed to have a guardian spirit, and every guardian spirit is a dead human, Riyon not just never interacts with them, but the story, for the most part, don?t even acknowledge their existence. The only spirit with a presence was a huge samurai following an ex-Prime Minister who was hyped as super strong but was dealt off-screen by Kubo. Another supernatural presence that had some impact was an Entity, the personification (?) of negative emotions appearing in the end of chapter 4, hinted as the one who has killed the previous guardian spirit of Kasuga Soichiro, attacked Riyon, and disappeared, never to be seen again. It?s like the author just didn?t care.
I have expected that this would be serious manga where the Japanese Prime Minister would address various important issues and challenges permeating Japan and was disappointed that in the world of manga, the only issue worth mentioned is radiation. I do understand how much of a trauma Fukushima disaster was, but the fact is that nuclear energy is one of the cheapest and environmentally friendly sources of energy, and phasing it out completely increases pollution and electricity cost. To think that phase out of nuclear energy would somehow make Japan better off or secure prime-minister?s legacy is delusional and myopic. Manga would be better if Kasuga knowing that he won?t live long would try to tackle crucial problems as two ?Lost Decades? of stagnant economic growth and abysmal demographic situation, or controversial topics as denial of Japanese atrocities in China and reformation of corrupt patronage-based political system resulting in Japan being de-facto one party state with Liberal Democrats ruling, with brief interjections, continuously since 1955.
Even if author?s initial goal was to push for denuclearization, the plot could have been done more gracefully. Manga portrayed closing down nuclear power plants as unquestionable good without exploring details as of how much would it cost or what would be alternative energy sources; Japan, by the time of Fukushima disaster, had only 10% of its energy produced from renewable sources, the majority of it hydroelectric. While there is a tremendous potential for wind and geothermal energies, various factors as protectionism, regulation hurdle, conservatism, not-in-my-backyard mentality hurdle green energy development.
I may be too harsh on manga, not mentioning deeper themes of life and death that I have enjoyed, but frankly, I was extremely disappointed with direction where story headed after such strong start, expecting a serious manga that tries to discuss wider problems permeating Japanese society, economy, and politics, but getting only a mix of an anti-nuclear pamphlet and a discount version of Yu Yu Hakusho.
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