The publisher Black box continues to publish original stories that have slipped under the radar of French-language publishers. The month of March sees the arrival on their catalog Bakuso City. It is a 290-page One shot originally published in 1989-1990 in the pages of Kadokawa's Comptiq magazine. The dynamic narrative if not innovative can be enjoyed as a nice variation around the cult work Akira.
Bosozoku to the rescue
They are three high school students in love with motorcycles and members of a well-known gang. Ryuichi, Momoru, Motoki roam the streets of the capital looking for the slightest pretext to defend their "territory" and attack other bosozoku, the Japanese motorcycle gangs. But during one of their brawls while chasing a car, they come face to face with the police, the army and the special intervention brigade. Not having cold eyes, they face their opponents and get their hands on one of the occupants of the car. She is a girl codenamed P-2. Not knowing why it is being pursued, it becomes a major issue. The police track her down and promise a bounty to the gangs who will bring her back. Our three scoundrels find themselves stuck in a story that is beyond them. And when their leader discovers a moral and a heart, they are launched into a race against time that could decide the fate of Tokyo. 
Bakuso City: action first
Screenwriter Jun Ujitani doesn't bother with details. His story begins in medias res. No round of observation. It plunges us into a frantic chase that hardly stops for 290 pages. A bit like in the last Mad Max movie, our heroes move forward and then retrace their steps. Action lovers will be delighted because this narrative is generous with high-speed clashes, street fights culminating in a final duel against helicopters. The terribly energetic drawing serves this purpose wonderfully, especially during twirling pursuits. The whole politico-military intrigue is revealed during the few moments of pause. It is evacuated in a few boxes. We may regret the speed with which the Japanese context is evoked. The story thus looks towards the side of Uchrony while maintaining a strong realistic dimension. This allows readers to enter the story very quickly without having to assimilate sums of information. On the other hand, the characters lose characterization and some issues are too quickly overlooked. 
A vintage tale
Readers must be warned. We are in front of a work that is more than thirty years old. Bakuso City describes a Japan of another era, depicting traumas of another century. All the thinking about gangs, the lost youth is understood in the context of this Japan of the late 1990s which was suffering the full force of the economic crisis born of the bursting of the speculative real estate bubble. The question of the weight of the military is another theme of this manga which irrigates many Japanese works of this time. Mamoru Oshii's Patlabor 2 didn't deal with other things. We finally find all the weight of the memory of the old Japanese imperialism that resurfaced in 1989 with the death of Emperor Hiro-Hito. Beyond these themes, it is especially the style that is very retro. Bakuso City is a dive into the world of Bosozoku. These biker gangs reached their peak between the 1970s and 1980s. It is estimated that they had at their peak 40,000 members. They regularly made headlines by their brawl, by the insecurity they caused on certain roads or even in certain neighborhoods. The manga reflects all the complexity of this phenomenon. Its codes, its violence, its code of honor, its imagery. It mainly links it to the political and social situation in Japan, which is engaged in unbridled growth. 
Bakuso City: a story that is cheerfully inspired by Akira
If the story can be followed with pleasure, it is nevertheless enormously inspired by the cult work of Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira. It was published in Japan between 1982 and 1990. The film was released in 1988. Both will be a colossal success in the archipelago and in the rest of the world. They go with the works of Mamoru Oshii to lay the foundations of Japanese-style animated Science Fiction. It seems impossible that the author and cartoonists of Bakuso City did not read, given these productions. Indeed, the whole structure of this manga takes up that of Akira. The accident, the gang, the opposition with the police. The love story between the chef and the rebel. The programmed annihilation of Tokyo. The opposition between Scientists and military. Bakuso City presents itself as a hyper concentrate of Akira from which we would have removed the political, mystical and science fictional dimensions. Written at the time when Akira stopped, this manga is like a clever exploitation of the success of Otomo's work. Which makes it all the quality but also the weakness. With Bakuso City, Blackbox gives a chance to an amazing story very inspired by the Akira series. Without equaling its model, it is tasted without displeasure carried by an energetic drawing and a narration that goes straight to the point. If you want to discover other works of this publisher, we invite you our opinion on The Samurai of the eternal.
