GetBackers Dakkanya

Author: Aoki Yuya (writer) and Ayamine Rando (artist)
Publisher: Kadokawa Comics (Shounen Magazine)

By Sabina

Yes, okay, I know, the Engrish! Sempiternal fodder for the fandom wags, an endless source of bon mots - "GetBackers, a manga about the financial rise and fall of a dot-com!" "GetBackers, a manga about a playwright desperately trying to make it on Broadway!" But no, the "dakkanya" bit translates roughly to "retrieval expert". In other words, they get. Things. Back. Wakarimasu? Such facility with language, these Japanese mangaka, haha. I'd be first in line to admit to the lameness of the thing, but the grammatically accurate construction appears to be "getters back", which no one ever says either. And you've seen far worse. I know you have. We all have.

With that out of the way, the facts are as follows:

GetBackers is a shounen fighter-type manga that runs in Shounen Magazine to the tune of a chapter a week, and is currently into its 23rd tankoubon. The rights have been picked up by Tokyopop over here, and the first English-translated collection is coming out early next year. There's a 49-episode anime series just wrapping up on TV, which followed the manga closely until (as most long-running anime do) it forked off on its own insane tangent. There are tie-in games for the GBA. There are tie-in games for the PS2. There are cards and pencilboards and cellphone straps and cosplay accessories, towels, mugs, folders, cushions, mousepads, en somme the entire range of uselessly cute trinkets on which to blow one's hard-earned paycheck. All normal for a popular shounen manga. It's ludicrously slashy. That's par for the course too. Or possibly not, because GetBackers valiantly goes above and beyond the call of fanservice-duty. But more on that in time.

The schtick is this: we're in a near-future Tokyo, circa 2010 at a guess, that's become dilapidated and lawless with ongoing economic stagnation. Midou Ban is a quarter-German descendant of a witch clan, who has a 200lb. grip and an Evil Eye that allows him to weave illusions (at an itty-bitty cost, as the genie would say). Amano Ginji was formerly a feared gang leader in the "Mugenjou," a sort of enclosed cyberpunk-ghetto warzone that exists where Shinjuku used to be (and why is it always Shinjuku? Why not Akihabara or Ikebukuro?). He controls electro-magnetism: everything from lightning bolts to particle beams on a good day. Together they fight crime! Sorry, couldn't resist. They have a free-lance business which consists of "retrieving" things or persons for the client - whether lost, stolen, snatched or just plain disappeared - for a negotiable fee. By the conventions of the genre, this leads them to solve mysteries, engage in buddy-type shenanigans, beat up - but never kill - bad guys, create happi endo for the deserving in each episode and yes, fight crime. Also by the conventions of the genre, they lose more money than they make, live out of their car and run an ever-growing tab at their favorite café. So far so good. Then someone got ambitious.

(Story spoilers from this point on, presumably.)

Complications to the settei arrive quickly. Ban's powers involve a snake spirit - Asclepius the constellation, no less - and a curse of unknown properties. He has a history of getting his friends killed, then having the family members of said friends come after him for revenge. The foremost of them, Himiko, is labouring under a mysterious familial curse of her own, due to take effect in true shoujo-horror style on her next birthday. In the meantime, Ginji's ex-generals Shido and Kadzuki come after him, since he was the "Raitei" - Thunder Emperor - of Mugenjou, and his abrupt departure left a power vacuum. They have angst-filled pasts like everyone else, both involving slaughtered clans, half-explained mystical powers, and hereditary enemies/allies shrouded in enigma. All these characters (plus several more) get funneled into a retrieval mission set in Mugenjou itself, which - it turns out - may or may not be controlled by an AI "God" gone wacko, may or may not have the characters' fates predicted and stored in an "Archive", is almost certainly a computer simulation in part, not to mention the creation of a shadowy organisation called "Brain Trust" that's trying to manipulate the nature of reality itself (and whose gnomic representative could be Nii Jieni's blond little sister, complete with '-hakase' and stuffed bunny). What we do know is that the topmost skyscraper-level of Mugenjou is a very odd place called "Babylon City," because a couple of our characters hail from there. Akabane, for instance, aka Dr. Jackal, aka friendly neighbourhood serial-killer who carries scalpels in his flesh, and most of the time he's an ally. It's hinted that all of the above is connected in some kind of Ur-storyline - or maybe it isn't. Thus far the skeletal plot of the first dozen to fifteen volumes, covered or semi-covered by the anime, not touching on the last story arc. And counting.

Somewhere in this there were also ruminations on art history and the neurological basis of perception, and a long Yuki Kaori-esque arc in which schoolkids take on apocryphal angelic personae and summon supernatural entities with mock-tarot cards (except they didn't, because possibly none of it was real). Ban's family history was involved in that, and Brain Trust may have been. They may also be involved with the giant insect people. Did I mention giant insect people?

In other words, GetBackers is not boring. It's not predictable either, once the mangaka have hit their stride, which is a biggie with this reviewer. The plot twists actually count as plot twists. The mysteries are impenetrable - though you can bet double dollars to doughnuts it's because the mangaka have no idea what they're doing from one episode to the next. Dense is probably the word that best describes the way the storyline piles up on itself, forging murky connections until some picture floats up out of the accidental whole. It lends itself easily to the kind of fannish over-analysis that warms a former X-Phile's heart.

The artwork is dense as well. Yami no Matsuei done over by Shounen Magazine: screentone upon crosshatch upon detailing, tiny speech bubbles crammed full of tiny kanji, more text-y than any shounen fighter series has a right to be. Not at all recommended to those who suffer from eyestrain (I'm a lost cause, but perhaps my tragic example can serve as a warning to others). The tenor of the thing veers wildly from tacky pneumatic-breasted ecchi to artsy shoujo-tanbi spreads replete with the bells of Gion Temple echoing the impermanence of all things etc., and back again within half a dozen pages. The drawing style is quasi-Mannerist, what Parmigianino would turn out if he were reincarnated as a mangaka. Swan necks, elongated limbs, distorted perspective, tattered swathes of swirling drapery, wide hips and pregnant curves even on men. [end art history wank] It's extremely sensuous. Among well-known character designers the one I'm occasionally reminded of is Obari Masami, of "Fatal Fury" and "Virus": everything up in your face, DDD cleavage, gleaming body-builder muscle, heteroerotic and homoerotic both, erotic in general. Somehow - as with Obari - it just errs on the side of pretty as well.

It all can get a bit much at times, if you don't have a taste for the baroque. Minekura's series look stripped-down in their subtlety afterward. Baroque is what I mostly like, though, and you're free to determine your own mileage.

So - now that I've talked about what the series is like without the BL - on to the BL. Yes, we're getting there. Have a bit of patience. (And don't think it's an easy task to write a factual review when one's fully engaged "kusatta joshi" mode as the Japanese say - fangirl brainrot. All I want to do right now is squee over Ginji's cow pajamas on the cover of vol.20, thank you.)