Absurdity is your new reality.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jinsei Kataoka
Art: Kazuma Kondou
Translation: Joe Yamazaki
Adaptation: Stan!
What They Say:
Framed for the brutal murders of his classmates by the mysterious Red Man, middle school student Ganta Igarashi finds himself sentenced to death and sent to the bizarre and fatal theme park/prison that has risen from the ruins of the Great Tokyo Earthquake—a hell on Earth known as “Deadman Wonderland.”
The inmates of this insane penitentiary fight for survival every day to provide entertainment for the masses, and terrifying secrets lurk in the shadows. Ganta is determined to survive Deadman Wonderland and clear his name, but the price may be his soul…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
We’ve seen a similar premise before, where someone gets framed for a murder they didn’t commit. This time, main character Ganta is framed for the MASS MURDER of his class. How anyone felt that a kid could pull off a mass murder in the deliciously gruesome fashion that it happened it beyond me, but here we are. Ganta has been Shawshank-ed
I say deliciously gruesome because the artwork here is pretty gorgeous. Not gorgeous in the way murder scenes in Hannibal are played out, but gorgeous in a way that you can appreciate the craft that went into the artwork to create this scene. From the get-go, with the amazing full color pages, to the end of the Dog Race, I was pretty stunned by the quality of not just the artwork, but the book itself. First off, the color pages are glossy, making them look even nicer. Then looking at the technical side of the artwork, it’s abundantly clear the care that was put into making it look top-notch. The death scenes are grotesque, yes, but they are not so gory as to be repulsive. They’re beautiful in a way that only cartoon death can be.
These deaths also put a good perspective on what this world is. Deadman Wonderland is a world unto itself and it operates by its own rules. In fact, Ganta gets a rulebook as he enters—he promptly doesn’t read it and misses out on a good deal of important details like, for example, the candy he has to eat in order to live.
These rules also create a pecking order within the prison, because they have their own currency in cast points, or CP. The CP can buy anything from nicer bedding to nicer food. It garners a certain level of respect and/or fear from the other inmates if you have more. Ganta has zero and he pushes himself into the aforementioned Dog Race to earn 100,000 CP.
The big introduction in the manga was the Red Man and the red gem he placed inside of Ganta. It seems this red gem’s power is something called Branch of Sin and I think the Red Man also has the power. It isn’t quite explained yet, but no one else seems to have power.
That is, unless you count the seemingly Albino girl, Shiro (literally Japanese for white). Her power, if she even does have one, seems to be being really genki and showing up when it’s most convenient. She’s really a mystery as of yet, and the female character to keep your eyes on is actually Azami, the girl who gave Ganta her sandwich.
Azami is also an inmate—what a girl like her did to get in is beyond me—but she respects her fellow man. Ganta is immediately complacent in Deadman Wonderland, wanting simply to not be caused any more misfortune. But Azami is silently defiant until the start of the Dog Race. When the brute Kozuji shows up, she’s fed up with his shit. She stands up against him and pays the price for it; her arm is broken or fractured or otherwise hurt.
Ganta, still trying to be complacent, is told to step on her. This is an act of dominance on Kozuji’s part, as that’s the only way we’ve seen him exert power. He hasn’t hurt anyone directly until Azami, who is a teenage girl. But Ganta rebels. His friends are more important than any pride or life he has in himself and he literally throws the rulebook at Kozuji, as if yelling at him to stop breaking the rules. Ganta, maybe just a little, doesn’t think Kozuji deserves to die and this is the only act he’ll take to try and protect him.
Needless to say, it doesn’t work. Everyone begins the death race and Kozuji threatens others into killing Ganta. They are unsuccessful due to the meddling of Shiro, which further solidifies the friendship between Ganta and Shiro. When she’s in dire straits, falling down the pit in the final level, Ganta sacrifices victory for her life.
How can they eat bean-jam buns together if she’s dead?
In Summary:
Deadman Wonderland is something I know only from a passing familiarity with the anime. I remember hearing it was airing on the renewed and reinvigorated Toonami block and I was interested because of all the censored swearing. I mean, how bad can an anime get with its swearing? As it turns out, the anime seems to have put that in, which I’m fine with. They’re in a prison with some ruthless people; they’d probably be swearing if they were speaking English—Shit’s and Fuck’s and Bastard’s going all around. Reading the manga is a much more…maybe serene experience. You don’t have the possibly distracting voices swearing up a storm, but you also don’t get to experience a voice cast bringing these characters more to life than a comic can (I’m thinking specifically of color that would be present in the animation as well).
However, imagination plays a big part into comics reading and Deadman Wonderland’s artwork is fantastic enough to bring these characters off the page. So much so that I have little desire to watch the anime for myself upon reading this volume. Through this volume, we learned a great deal about Ganta that set him up very well for the coming volumes. Lots can also be said about Yo and Azami, but woefully little about Shiro. I’ll keep reading to see more of Azami’s defiant nature and be better off for it.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: February 11th, 2014
MSRP: $9.99
