Daily Lives of High School Serial Killers
Creative Staff:
Story & Art: Hiroya Oku
Translation: Stephen Paul
Lettering: Scott Brown
Editing: Ajani Oloye
What They Say:
FRIEND OF AN ENEMY
Inuyashiki has put a stop to Samejima and his gang, but there are worse evils that he must face. Tokyo is still plagued by a string of cold-blooded murders that are being committed by Inuyashiki’s cyborg counterpart, Shishigami, and Inuyashiki is the only one who can stop him. To prevent more senseless killings, Inuyashiki must learn how to master his newfound abilities, but he can’t do it alone. Fortunately, there’s someone close to Shishigami who wants to stop his rampage just as badly, and his knowledge may be just what Inuyashiki needs to take him down once and for all.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Following last volume’s constant stream of action with little in the way of dialogue to really flesh out the situation, this volume of Inuyashiki pulls the exact opposite, taking a breather from the high-octane summer blockbuster-style fight sequences in favor of something more worthwhile: building up its core cast.
After the rather halfhearted chapter wrapping up Inuyashiki’s unexpectedly brutal attack on the Yakuza, the remainder of this volume focuses primarily on Hiro—our seemingly heartless villain and polar opposite to Inuyashiki. While we still get next to nothing in the way of an explanation for why he carries out his killings in the first place, we do get to see a more human side to him, outside of playing vigilante at school.
Like most everything else in the series, author Oku’s hyper-realistic art makes for an almost uncomfortably intimate setting, really giving the feel that you’re witnessing somebody go through the motions of their daily life. In this case, Hiro is split between households, occasionally visiting his now-estranged father and father’s new family, while living with his significantly poorer mother. While it still doesn’t justify Hiro’s serial killings, it does offer an insight to Hiro’s frame of mind, offering two very different sides to his upbringing, and a very human aspect for him, as cold as he acts otherwise. The lengths he goes to for the sake of his mother make you really feel for the character, only to have him quickly fall back to his normal, cold, self soon enough.
Meanwhile, Hiro’s now ex-friend Ando has been feeling cornered lately, unwilling to accept Hiro’s meaningless acts of violence, but powerless to stop them himself. Thus, acting on a hunch, he cries for help and within the minute is faced with none other than the elderly Inuyashiki, who heard his cries thanks to his bionic enhancements. The unlikely duo works in terms of the story—Ando providing any and all sci-fi insight to Inuyashiki’s powers—but in terms of any chemistry between the two, they seem shallow at best.
Little is done in the way of making the two feel like a convincing duo by any definition of the term. At the least, you’d expect Ando to serve as the Q to Inuyashiki’s James Bond, but the two don’t really do much in the way of interacting with each other, most of their scenes feeling like they’re sharing the spotlight without much in terms of any friendly back-and-forth. There is a brief line from Ando, awkwardly mentioning how beautiful Inuyashiki’s daughter is, but for the most part the two tend to focus on the task at hand: testing out the limits to Inuyashiki’s powers.
The constant switching between Hiro’s daily life, and Inuyashiki’s training is obviously meant to further contrast the two, but the message never seems fully realized. The quick cuts between the two make scenes feel unnecessarily choppy, and the scenes themselves are far too unrelated to really be compared or contrasted in any way, merely done as a quick means to catch up with both the hero and villain of the series and gear up for the next action-packed confrontation, which closes out the volume.
In Summary:
Inuyashiki volume 4 is a nice break from the shallow action-sequences of last volume, making our antagonist, Hiro Shishigami, significantly more relatable through his daily family strife. And while the teenager and old man camaraderie between Ando and Inuyashiki isn’t as likeable as it could be, it does progress the plot significantly as Inuyashiki begins to get a firmer grasp of his powers.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: June 28, 2016
MSRP: $12.99
