I decided to give Hiroya Oku Inuyashiki a shot after reading his incredible story Gantz. Inuyashiki left nothing left to be desired with a tone Oku loves to create, whimsical, futuristic yet a realistic approach to the modern day Tokyo.

The story we begin with is a tale of two people seemingly in different positions in life by the public. One, criticized and scrutinized by his family and people around him for-his looks, attitude, etc… A shakily man named Ichirou Inuyashiki and the ever popular Hiro Shishigami. A teenager who gets along with seemingly anyone. As both of them come together for the first time it takes place in a field where a landing martian kills them both, turning them each into machines. Thus, starting the tale of machine vs. man.

Oku has a great writing style of making each character be misunderstood in their own right, so even though they both have different aspects of life, Ichirou cannot seem to be understood by anyone around him just for his looks, as Hiro can’t have anyone around him to really know him as well. They both are misunderstood as robots as they are humans, since robots are known for being machines and can’t feel - that twist and conflict is present throughout the whole story. The biggest example being the reason one decides to turn bad and the other good. The point being, when you feel you aren’t human anymore, what do you have to live for? What can atone for your lacking in humanity? The end of civilization reveling in your new power? Or saving the misfortunate and becoming a modern day “God” in saving them?

Throughout the story a majority of it was Hiro “defending himself” against the out looks of society, thinking of himself as an enemy of the state. In every way this is true, as his own actions against people by killing a majority of them would have the entire state on you. I didn’t appreciate the majority of the manga being nothing but his battle against him and the state, killing people, and deciding to go back on that by meeting Shion and her family. Shion being the only reason he stopped killing for a while after having met her at school.

However, Ichirou on the other hand made the whole story feel complete in it’s own way, he balanced out the evil interacted in the story by being the good, saving lives and being by the end suddenly adored by the public. After Hiro had been adorned himself be being the face of evil. The two made great appearances with themselves together, even after their final brawl it was clear that even though their forms were most certainly robotic, everything on the inside about them was human.

Overall, this is a great sci-fi read, that tangles on the line of humanistic rather than focusing on individual parts of their robot form. I think each character held up on their own, my only gripe being multiple parts of the story seemed to focus only on Hiro and his ways of violence. Ichirou was only used as a “saving” man, rather than making himself into the hero he knows he should be. In a way he loves himself and is happy he became a machine to understand this, but it should’ve been clear in most of what he did to come to that, rather than focus on Hiro’s destruction.