Sanctuary (manga) Vol.1Sanc­tu­ary (Vol.1) , copy­right 2004 by Sho Fumin­mura and illus­trated by Ryoichi Ikegami is about Japan hav­ing “no heroes”. It’s about two men who enter into the world of crime and pol­i­tics, on dif­fer­ent paths, who rise up within their organization’s ranks of power. They are ambi­tious and deter­mined and will stop at noth­ing to trans­form Japan into their own “sanctuary.”

Akiro Hojo runs the Rop­pongi Hokusho Soci­ety. He is yakuza (mob­ster) with a no prior crim­i­nal record. He’s good look­ing and charm­ing and very ambi­tious. When the story opens he estab­lishes his author­ity as some­one not to play with when it comes to doing busi­ness. A pho­tog­ra­pher with dam­ag­ing pho­tos of a politi­cian decides to up his price because he con­sid­ers Hojo a “small time yakuza.” The pho­tog­ra­pher soon regrets that move after they’ve paid him a visit. The politi­cian whom Hojo had him fol­low is a mem­ber of the Lib­eral Demo­c­ra­tic party. Hojo’s plans to black­mail him into giv­ing up his con­stituency finds him­self fac­ing a for­mi­da­ble adver­sary. Diet­man Sakura’s pri­vate secretary,Chiaki Asami, ends up kick­ing them out of his office.

Lit­tle does Sakura know that Hojo and Asami already know each other. They grew up together and sur­vived the hor­rors of the Cam­bo­dian killing fields together. Asami has plans to enter into Japan­ese Par­lia­ment while Hojo has plans to be the leader of the yakuza. There are many facets to Hojo’s char­ac­ter that I find engag­ing. While he is cold and cal­cu­lat­ing when the job calls for it, he is loyal and sym­pa­thetic to those in need. He is smart and dri­ven and is extremely loyal to his friends. Asami seems more elu­sive to me in this vol­ume (1). I know he gets his finan­cial back­ing from Hojo. I know he has dreams of being prime min­is­ter of Japan and that he is loyal to his friend. I’m sure as the series pro­gresses, his char­ac­ter will start to become a lit­tle more fleshed out for me.

Deputy Chief Ishi­hara is an élite of the police depart­ment. She plans to expose the yakuza orga­ni­za­tion by going under­cover. Regret­fully, her cover is already blown before she even meets Hojo. They meet at the bar and he pretty much flirts with her and then drugs her. Hojo dupes her into think­ing that they’ve had sex (he emp­ties a can of tomato sauce on the sheets). His clev­er­ness only makes her even more inter­ested in him.

There are all kinds of col­or­ful char­ac­ters in here along with plenty of polit­i­cal sus­pense and intrigue. Almost all of the char­ac­ters in here do a lot of plot­ting and schem­ing behind each other’s back. This volume(1) seems to focus more on Hojo’s rise to power and how Asami’s path to polit­i­cal power might take a bit longer. The art­work in here is just lovely and the plot is com­plex and very engag­ing. This is one of the few manga’s that’s kept me turn­ing the pages. The first vol­ume does end on a cliffhanger (hate those) and the author does leave you want­ing to read more. Thank good­ness I had the fore­thought to order the sec­ond vol­ume while I try to locate the third.

The orig­i­nal dis­trib­u­tor of this series was Shogakukan which is a Japan­ese pub­lisher who owns Viz Media here in the US. The series is rated M for mature audi­ence. This series ran from 1990 to 1995 and already some titles are OOP. It’s a com­pleted story within 12 vol­umes. I hate to rave about a series that has quite a few miss­ing vol­umes but this series so far is very good. Any­way, great story, great art­work, my grade, A.

Tech­no­rati Tags: , ,