You gotta shoot em’ in the head.
In the future, Earth has been hit by the N5S toxin, turning humanity into a mass of the undead. Toa Heavy Industry is working on finding a cure and their primary doctor, Dr. Kurokawa, has been taken hostage by DRF forces. An agent of T.H.I, Zoichi Kanoe, has been sent to save the doctor and his daughter. To get inside the T.H.I headquarters, Kanoe must face the undead deformations as well as DRF forces in order to save them. This simple set up creates some of the most intense action I’ve ever read in a Manga. In one chapter Kanoe battles a jet while riding his motorcycle and wielding an axe! Throw in a talking grizzly bear with a hook for a hand and you’ll have an idea how awesome Biomega Vol 2 is.
Highlights
Biomega feels a lot more like a western comic rather than the Manga that this is intended as. Furthermore, Tsutomu Nihei was also responsible for the Halo graphic novel that released in 2006. Gone are the constant inner-monologues that plague other titles and are replaced with a heavier focus on the artwork to tell the story. Often this Manga shows large intense pieces across multiple panels without guidance through dialogue. I appreciate this because it keeps the action fast and doesn’t bog the pages down with over-dramatics.
Biomega takes a lot of cues from the Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan) video game series and the original anime Akira. In addition to the shuffling zombies running amok, Zoichi fights a creature that looks very similar to the tyrant at the end of the first RE game. Not only that, the DRF Forces look similar to the HUNK character from RE 2 and 4. The motorcycle Kanoe rides looks similar to Akira’s bike as well as his riding suit. Now, all this isn’t a bad thing. If you’re going to borrow ideas, borrow them from baddass properties like these two.
Tsutomu Nihei’s use of heavy shading makes the artwork in Biomega Vol 2 one of the more solid efforts I’ve seen. The darker cells really work with the heavy amount of gore and violence present in this issue. With all that said, the heavy shading is also a double-edged sword. It causes a few of the scenes to look muddled and less detailed. The scene at the end of chapter 14 and the beginning of 15 are such cases. It’s not so bad that it’s unreadable, but it does hurt the experience slightly, though only occasionally.
Overall
Biomega is an extremely unique storytelling experience and Vol 2 offers a great mix of horror and action elements throughout its quick read. There are enough twists and turns here to hook any mature reader and the western style employed in this series is a breath of fresh air.
ComicsOnline gives Biomega Vol 2 4.5 out of 5 mutated monsters.
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