One part social commentary, one part psychology lesson
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Tetsuya Tsutsui
Translation/Adaptation: Kumar Sivasubramanian
What They Say:
A newspaper-masked vigilante who broadcasts his acts of vengeance before committing them. A newly-formed police division tackling the new frontier of internet-based crime. As the sun rises on the Era of Information, can a group of people who found themselves at the bottom of the food chain rattle society through the web and avenge a fallen friend?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
About six or seven years ago, when Steam was really starting to get rolling, the first story in Prophecy would have so much more resonance. Right now, it still has resonance. People are still stealing games and the ones that do pile on to say that it’s their right to steal a shitty game. It’s shitty after all. The people who fight against it bloat numbers. $450,000,000 (45 billion yen) lost on a game for uploads seems like a ludicrous number nowadays. I mean, there’s no way that a game company could lose that much right? That’s half of what Grand Theft Auto V made worldwide in 24 hours. There’s no timeframe given to the game’s release and when the boy is arrested, but it must be significant. The question I should be asking is does all this matter? Well, no it doesn’t. The sentiment is what matters. A group of “activists” that are doing all the wrong things and the police fighting against them seemingly unwilling to see any other side.
Prophecy is two extreme sides of several arguments where there’s no middle ground for either side. It’s poignant at any time, especially now with social media movements and political conservatives. No one gives in because the situation that surrounds them won’t allow that kind of mindset. That wouldn’t be giving up, that’d be flipping an unmovable switch.
As with Gone Girl before it (at least from my point of view), Prophecy doesn’t pull any punches. It shows the most vile sides of both arguments, but also manages to give each of them justification. The police are just doing their job, after all. These particular police never take it too far (at least not yet), but you see a twinge of joy when Lieutenant Erika Yoshino tells the boy he owes game companies 45 billion yen. Both sides are sickening, yet justified in their own little ways.
The first about fourth of the book is spent on the police and setting up the Paperboy as the villain. He’s only done heinous acts that go much too far. But the final chapter explains everything. A previous Vertical book, No Longer Human, showed just how far a human could fall into despair following the deprave acts that life gave him. Prophecy shows no such despair, but a vengeance to those who wronged and desire for “justice” to those who were wronged. It gives meaning to the most extreme acts in the world through the life of one young man, just searching for his father. There’s no pretense that this is in his memory, but to “do the right thing” in their eyes. To everyone else, it all seems so trivial. But people clamor to that.
In Summary:
I heard a lot of buzz about Prophecy before I dug in myself and I can’t say I’m disappointed. It puts in a stellar first volume that hooks you with commentary before questioning why these extremists are even doing what they’re doing until finally giving them reason in what little they have. Characterization has been sparse, preferring instead for representations of what these characters stand for. They even say in the book, Paperboy is shared ownership of one persona. You can’t arrest a persona. You’ll never be able to. That’s the fear that Paperboy instills and it’s chilling how good it is.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Released By: Vertical Comics
Release Date: November 18th, 2014
MSRP: $12.95
