Manga Review: Livingstone, Volume 1, by Jinsei Kataoka and Tomohiro Maekawa

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: Kodansha Comics

Release Date: November 3, 2015

Volumes: 4.

Spoilers?: Minor.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

Goodreads Synopsis:

At the beginning of the 20th century American Doctor, Duncan MacDonald, engaged in a series of unethical experiments. Those experiments concluded that should one suffer a death not ordained by fate the human body lightened by an average of 30 grams, the weight of a man's soul stone.

Today, two men, Sakarai and Amano, are in the hunt to find people who are about to die before their time and either prevent their unnatural death or recover these stones, "Livingstones."

Review:

Since the artist is from Deadman Wonderland, I was intrigued. I’m a little unsure, though.

This is definitely a dark series, and the artwork is of course the same as Deadman Wonderland, which is very nice to look at. The expressions are dark and striking. There are a few color pages at the front of the book, and those are always nice to look at.

The concept—that people have a set path but sometimes stray when imprints get dark, and there are people who can see these things and fix them—is very interesting. And of course get dark, when people get depressed and angry and want to kill themselves. That’s when the main characters step in, to clear things up and set them right.

Sometimes the story lines are depressing, like the first one; conflicting, like when a women doesn’t really want to end things and comes to a compromise; or just depressing, like when there’s an accident and a dog gets angry in the aftermath. There are some interesting characters, and I’m sure there will be more depth and more characters introduced later.

I’m intrigued, but not quite sucked in yet.