Nigreid

Author: Takaguchi Satosumi
Imprint: Asuka Comics
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
ISBN vol.1- 4-04-924586-8
vol.2- 4-04-924655-4
vol.3 4-04-924696-1
vol.4 4-04-924741-0

Reviewed by Jeanne

Let's begin by talking about Hagio Moto. No, there's a reason; we'll get to it in a minute.

Hagio Moto by me is a genius. Her works are of a consistently dazzling quality, with (so far as I've seen) none of the ups and downs that plague even her fellow '49ers. If I were Japanese and had read her as a seminal part of my adolescence I'm sure I'd have something pretty sharp to say to any gaijin crass enough to diss them.

I am not Japanese, as you may have noticed. So I'll say I find it hard at times to forgive Hagio-sensei for Touma no Shinzou, The Heart of Thomas. That's the one about a tormented schoolboy in Germany-- not the Thomas of the title, as it happens. Thomas is a younger pupil who (no spoiler this, it happens on the first page practically) kills himself by jumping in front of a train. And I think it no spoiler to say he does so because he's an idiot of a hyper-romantic adolescent German as conceived of by one of those clean-fetishist Japanese. (The downside of Shinto as a cultural template- this thing about purity. They apply it to souls and spirits and characters, to the confusion of Judeo-Christian westerners who automatically associate the state with the sexual and physical. We don't often think about having a dirty soul, let alone a soul that's been dirtied by someone else. But BL heroes are forever moaning about how dirty their souls are compared to shining wonderful Him, and wanting to have sex- role optional- so He can make them clean again.)

Now Touma by itself it wouldn't rouse my ire. I've read worse examples of thematic idiocy; the name Kaze to Ki no Uta comes at once to mind. But there's a generation of mangaka who imprinted on the thing and when they go back to their roots they give us Ni-grade. I suppose that's somebody's word for black, because that's what the title kanji means; the temptation to read it as 'second grade' is of course overwhelming. And it's a mess, of course. This and its predecessor Gin have an obscure settei in which a certain 'silver' soul- the last 'silver' in God's hand, whatever that's supposed to mean- comes to earth and gets mixed up with blackness and comes to earth again as two separate souls, one silver (that's the prequel, Gin, by all accounts more of a mess than this one even) and one black- that's our hero, April. Who was born in April and found near a ruined building at a Catholic boys' school.

So in vol 1 April is a suffering put-upon Touma no Shinzou schoolboy in 1938 seeking salvation from his friend Aaron while being seduced/ raped by beautiful bad guy Tristan; and in vol 2 it's 1941 and he's a cold-eyed psychic/ psychotic whoring it up with a Nazi lover and demanding that the Nazis destroy England while prophesying in the next breath that they can't; and then it's 1957 and he's seeking salvation from Aaron's opportunely appearing and very young son Kirie. Then in vol 3 he and his Nazi lover and Kirie are living together when who should show up but Tristan's little sister now grown up. Nazi lover or no Nazi lover April gets her pregnant, very off-screen, and then we have an interview between Kirie and one of April's old school pals, now a priest, which allows for an information dump in which we recap the past and are told that little sister died after giving birth to a boy she called April.

So then in the second half of vol 3 it's 1975 and we meet April II, an art student, and what looks very much like April I except he's calling himself Beatrice and is a detective at Scotland Yard (and a man though there's some confusion about this among the people he works with.) This is all very confusing because we don't find out to the very end of vol 4 that in fact Beatrice is Beatrice and *not* April I. April I has left the action a tank and a half ago, along with his Nazi lover and Kirie. But if it helps, we also learn at the very end that Beatrice is April I's *other* son (well, child- Beatrice is a hermaphrodite) and his mother was Tristan's aunt who *also* died in childbirth, and he was raised by Tristan's mother so he's April II's half-brother as well as his first cousin once removed. Yeah. There's also side-plots with Beatrice's partner and a mass-murderer active in London, and someone with an unpronounceable name (guess what Sahaan Rezakku is in any western language of your choice) who appears in all the volumes to 'express the will of God to his chosen' and also to blow up the occasional Science Centre in England.

Ahh- did I say this was a mess? It's a mess. It has the rambling incoherence of a four year old making up a story on the spur of the moment and looking at you with patent triumph afterwards, confident that you'll buy it all. This is beginning to irritate me a little. There should be Draconian penalties for starting a series with no coherent notion of what's going to happen after your first inspired scene. Mangaka would not follow their noses so often if they stood in danger of having them cut off for doing so.

This series also has a lot of talk about saving April's soul; he has a grudge against Aaron cause he said he'd do it and didn't. He goes jonesing around looking for someone to save his soul, under the rooted conviction that he can't do it himself. Now I'm as good a lapsed cradle Catholic as the next reviewer, and I'm happy to have the Japanese playing fast and loose with Christianity for their own purposes, including as here romanticizing Lucifer as the ultimate raping seme. (Poor sweet bay-bee Lucifer I can do without, but never mind.) But FTR let's get one thing straight. Faith. Good works. God's grace. There are only three paths to salvation in Christianity, and those are them. (Which ones you use depends on which branch of Christianity you follow, of course. Good works cuts no ice with Presbyterians.) You cannot be saved by anyone else, no matter how pure his soul is and no matter how romantic the idea sounds and no matter how often you screw him. OK? So no use ravishing that bishounen out from under his great-uncle's eyes, April, thinking he's your ticket to Heaven. It don't work like that.