Sleep Is For the Weak

16 and up for for violence, sex, and general post-apocalyptic insanity; official series website

Ever wonder what would happen if you were one of the few people to survive an apocalyptic catastrophe? Well, according to Dragon Head, there’s at least a one-in-three chance you’ll end up stripping, painting on bizarre war paint with someone’s discarded Maybelline, and trying to attack your fellow survivors to appease the deified darkness of the human spirit within about twenty minutes of the disaster. Dragon Head is an entertaining, suspenseful survival-horror seinen. The art is creepy and cool, and the plot seems to move quickly even when it takes the main characters an extremely long time to find even the tiniest clues about what’s happened to the world.

The characters are more interesting the less important they are. The main character, whose name I had to look up to put in this review – Teru – is a bland everyman. His love interest Seto is only interesting when he isn’t around – when he is, they revert to a lame “I’ll protect you forever, random girl” dynamic. The side characters they interact with with are what keep the story interesting – the ex-military guy who thinks it’ll be fun to take advantage of the new lawlessness, the middle-aged woman who watches over the graves of her friends and family, the cultish cliques of survivors each with their own special brand of insanity, and, most intriguingly, the mysterious man with the stitches all around his head who may or may not be the key to what’s happened.

The ideas Dragon Head presents about good and evil are nothing new, and the story is a bit unrealistic in how quickly it takes for people to go from reason to ritualistic voodoo, but those points are easy enough to ignore in favor of the plot’s action and mystery.

Educated impression: Worth a try. (Nothayama)

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