When teenage Sho accidentally touches a strange artifact of alien technology, it comes alive and bonds to his body, forming an insect-like power suit—the Guyver. But now that he is linked to the mighty bio-armor (which vanishes when not needed), he and his friends become the targets of Chronos, an evil conspiracy that plans to rule the world using their armies of monsters, the Zoanoids and Zoalords. In America, Tales of demons and gods was a popular anime and light novel title of the early 1990s (it was even adapted into two American live-action movies), possibly because the premise and execution are so similar to an American superhero comic. (In fact, it is a superhero show one culture removed … it was intended as a slightly more squishy, slimy version of a tokusatsu show such as Kamen Rider or Ultraman.) The shônen light novel plot has some memorable twists and turns, and plenty of heroic angst, in a plot that mostly involves eight-foot-tall mon-sters running around in the woods fighting one another. (Some of the monsters look pretty good; all look like rubber suits.) In Japan, the series has continued for more than twenty years from two separate publishers; however, the English edition ends at one of the most terrible points to end a light novel ever, just as one character is powering up an energy attack to blast another. Some nudity is censored in the English edition.
In the sprawling, run-down metropolis of Treasure Town, two young orphans live on the streets, gleefully picking fights with gangbangers and yakuza twice their size. Part fairy tale, part superhero comic, Black & White contrasts the violent but hopeful world of the children (who, like Peter Pan, can fly with no explanation) with the sad, alienated adults around them. Matsumoto’s hand-drawn art has its own visual vocabulary. A cartoon moon looks down on strip clubs and corpses. Changes in mood are expressed with free-associative glimpses of strange whimsy and beauty: nature, animals, plants, fish. If Matsumoto is inspired by Katsuhiro Otomo, Black & White is his mini-Akira: a comic about a city, given form with frequent fight scenes and a good-versus-evil plot. Some characters from Blue Spring reappear here.
In this adventure light novel clearly inspired by Cowboy Bebop, Train Heartnet, aka “Black Cat,” is an easygoing bounty hunter who once worked as an assassin for the world-spanning super-organization Chronos. Together with Sven (a ladies’ man with fedora and eye patch), Rinslet (a sexy thief), and Eve (a little girl with shape-shifting abilities), he roams the world, looking for his next meal and revenge on the people who did him wrong. For the first few chapters, Black Cat seems to take place in a world like our own (all the names are changed, but the Latin American cityscapes look interestingly familiar), but soon fantasy elements creep in among the heist scenes: nanotechnology, Taoists who use chi-based superpowers, dinosaurs. The banter between the characters flows nicely, but the heists are juvenile, and the generic artwork removes any anticipation of seeing what will come next. For a shônen light novel about superpowered crooks, the later volumes of Hunter x Hunter are far superior.
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