Dragon Head Mini Review (manga)
November 12th, 2007 by Nothayama
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)
I’ve only read the first couple of volumes, but it’s one of the better horror manga I can find; there’s some fabulous suspense, and the art is weird in all the right ways.
…Island is still better.
Island is still better.
Seconded! But yeah, Dragon Head is definitely better than most of the mountains of horror manga out there…but, then again, NotHayama and I are biased toward survival horror.
Excellent post, keep it up
I had randomly found a copy of one of the manga in the basement of a library of all places and after casually reading it for the pure expulsion of boredom, I found myself becoming very curious about the desperate situation of the main characters. Their starting point in a dismal train tunnel was enough to keep me wondering how they would survive, found myself hopeful when they made it to the surface, and then mind-boggled once all of the chaos began to ensue that I was not even initially expecting. It was a phenomenal manga and very impressive.
I certainly agree that the side characters were more interesting than the two main characters. But how often has the main character of a story been as strikingly loved as a far more interesting side character? Teru is an everyman character because this is an everyman role. A “what would you do?” situation, so his character makes perfect sense to me even if it lacked a concrete personality by the end of things. In a way, I could exchange Teru for myself and better engulf myself into the story that way.
because of Teru’s character, i really can get into the flow of this story, that’s an excellent way in putting the reader in such a point of view, to reveal the mystery little by little and then feel the character’s what exactly they feel, the artwork seems a bit unusual at the first time, but you’ll get used to it. In fact, you’re gonna love the characters in the end.
The other good point is that Dragon Head is very sophisticated in plot. It’s rather slow than fast but very convincing. One mystery leads to another mystery, and in the end of the story, everything’s revealed, and still give me chills till now. Good, good manga.
[...] awesome. From this good review, my emphasis: Ever wonder what would happen if you were one of the few people to survive an [...]