Monday Manga Review: Fire Candy

Basically

What do you get when you mix teenagers with dangerous and addictive drugs? You get some fucked up teenagers of course. But that’s dull because it’s been done to death by countless writers and artists in the past. What you would need to do is spice things up. What if the teenagers were part animal? That’s a lot cooler right there, people eat up that anthropomorphic shit by the bucket load. And what if they spent a fair amount of their free time doing some kind of dangerous street racing? That’s totally extreme so it’s even better! I’ll take it to the next level for you, though: what if the drugs these kids do had a slight chance of setting them on fire? That, my friend, is fucking bad ass.

A wise genderless and ageless person named Jura compared “Fire Candy” to “Air Gear” and it’s easy to see why. The racing the kids do involves highly stylized roller blades,  like it does in AG, often rigged with small engines in order to maximize the already insane speeds these things can achieve, like in AG. Suffice it to say that the very act of participating in these races can get your dumb ass killed, like in AG, but it just so happens that the gang is lead by two exceptional riders, cow-boy and the guy with lion marks named, get this, Leo.

Leo! Seriously! Only the Japanese can write this bad and still look awesome.

The drug that causes the previously mentioned spontaneous human combustion explosion has defied every scientific boundry ever created and was somehow green lighted as safe enough to distribute to the public. Most of the world’s populace, human or “half” as the animal people are called, seems to be completely addicted to it. The cause of the signature unfortunate side-effect has no discernable pattern; you could be set ablaze minutes, hours, or even days after taking it. Even if you quit you could still burst in flames at any moment, because fire is an asshole. The way these guys talk it’s like merely mentioning the stuff could spark the chemical reaction required to cook you inside and out. Oh! And guess what this drug is called! That’s right, it’s called fire candy. Why didn’t they just skip all that clever subtlety and call it OMG I’M FUCKING BURNING ALIVE?

First Impressions

I should start by saying that this manga is actually pretty easy on the eyes. The characters are detailed and feature plenty of unique characteristics, lines are used effectively to suggest all the things they ought to, and all the crazy futuristic stuff looks like it was probably made a year from now. Strangely, however, the backgrounds don’t share this kind of loving attention, and many are completely blank. Even if it’s night time outside the panel will be white while the characters are shaded appropriately. I’m not sure what this technique is called, but I’ll just refer to it as “OH SHIT THE DEADLINE’S TOMORROW”, or OSTDT for short.

It’s also worth noting that this manga has a mature audience firmly in mind. Besides showing you people burning alive and eventually exploding (sometimes as a fireball and sometimes as a tightly-packed sausage, I don’t know what kind of conditions need to be met for either one) a mere 8 pages into the thing you’re treated to some big brown breasts and a couple pages of hedonism. You’ve seen it many times before, especially if you rocked out with your cock out back when Crying Freeman was new and exciting, though rarely featuring a brown girl, I’m sure.

One thing I’m getting pretty fucking tired of is manga-ka’s drawing characters that look like they’re in their early 20’s but labeling them as teenagers just to get them into that certain niche’ in order to appeal readers who dig that sort of thing. And even stranger, once one of the characters is revealed to be 16 in chapter 4 he’s immediately drawn much differently than he was in the 3 chapters preceeding it. It’s inconsistent and pretty silly, but a minor detail.

Then again, this series seems to have a pretty good sense of humor. Despite the bleak-as-fuck intro there’s some laughs to be had here in the typical slapstick anime way it usually presents itself.

In fact, once you hit chapter 5 the atmosphere is completely different from the first 2. This about-face might be disappointing if you were really digging the gloomy mood in the early chapters. And honestly, I thought that the harshness of those chapters were much more satisfying than the typical anime shit you get by the time you hit 5. It’s like flushing a Transformer down the toilet just to get a Go-Bot, it makes no sense and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing it.

Summary

Fans of Air Gear will feel quite at home here. The art quality is surprisingly high, the characters have some appeal and a lot of potential, and the more mature subject matter is a good step up from what Air Gear offered (and there was implied rape in AG!). Those of you looking for something a little different might be intrigued, but be warned that the manga quickly waters itself down and changes completely after the first few chapters. This is definitely something you’ll have to continue readng to gauge properly, and I think I’ll do just that.

Arbitrary Grade Score: 5 pairs of motorized roller blades out of 10.

~ by KT Samurai on July 28, 2008.