Monochrome Factor

I’ve just finished mainlining Monochrome Factor. (This is all Vathara’s fault.) I suspect I may actually get this one in the domestic release, to have them for rereads. I’m mildly agonized that the manga is progressing so slowly (only six volumes in several years), but it’s still worth the read.

Spoilers follow.

The plot is fairly standard “save the world by fighting monsters and the Other Side who is sending them” fare. Hung on the plot, however, are some very tasty character dynamics. We have the hero (kind of), Akira, who’s a pretty-boy slacker thug, kind of like Ichigo redrawn as a gen-x cliche, and the reincarnation of a high spiritual entity. Only he doesn’t remember a lick of it. We have his dippy boy sidekick, Kengo, who can get a bit annoying but is probably the nicest person in the whole cast. We have the amazingly non-token-like girl, Aya, a prefect, disciplinary committee, kendo club (I think Hibari would like her) who smacks sense into Akira because she’s the one who actually gets how important this all is and what fighting spirit is all about. We have Akira and Kengo’s older buddy Kou, the hentai who tries to grope Aya and gets righteously beaten up for it and who is, incidentally, the otherworldly liege man of Akira’s past self. We have our anti-hero (kind of) Shirogane, the counterpart high spiritual entity who drags Akira into all this, most likely has an agenda of his own, and really, really demonstrates the adage “it’s always the nice ones you have to watch out for”. Also with long, long silver hair, just to round off the tastiness.

While there are some bobbles starting out, as the characters are settling into their narrative relationships to one another, they develop very nicely. Akira and Kengo are unspeakably teenage boy like and have fist fights to show their affection. Aya is clearly not a romantic interest of anyone yet, which makes my heart sing even when she isn’t very competently slicing up the landscape with a sword. The tension between Akira and Shirogane, made up of the secrets Shirogane keeps, the way he cares for Akira, the almost-student-mentor bond they develop, and the yet unknown relationship Shirogane had with Ryuuko, Akira’s past self, is simply delicious. It’s garnished delightfully with the tension between Shirogane and Kou, neither of them trusting the other with Akira but both bound to a sort of alliance through Akira.

And there’s a totally psychotic villain and at least one character on his side whose allegiance and actions are shrouded in mystery, which always makes things interesting.

The anime, alas is utter trash. I say this with great woe, because Suwabe Junichi voices Shirogane, and I was hoping for better. But no, not only does it devolve into total crack (I mean, overtops tenipuri level crack), not only does it make Shirogane into a wuss and Aya into a wimp (unforgivable), it entirely reorganizes the storyline into dreadfully cliche sentai shenanigans and thereby surgically removes all the dramatic tension. It cranks up Akira and Shirogane’s relationship to bona fide BL, though without any real emotional or even eyecandy payoff, but after the delicate tension between them that the manga sustains it’s way too slapstick to do anything but roll one’s eye s over.

So read the manga, don’t touch the anime.