Story 7.6/10
Zombies are all the rage these days. The combination of transmitable infection and the inevitable onslaught of mindless horrors provides an
easy source of thrills and the proper context to show people at their
worst. Good thing Fujisawa Yuki could care less about popularity. It's one thing to
overrun a country with running or shuffling undead or even to fill its
landscape with creepy fish creatures, but if you want to see all the
way into the dark depths of human nature, destroy Japan with a
commodity.
The whole mess starts
when some bio-meat--a genetically engineered food source--escape their
facility in the heart of a Japanese city. Continually ravenous and
capable of rapid reproduction, they quickly overrun the town, consuming
nearly all of the residents. From here, the mangaka weaves together
three escalating tales of atrocity where the heroic initial survivors
fight the to save Japan from the ravages of unchecked human greed and
legions of hungry creatures. Fujisawa performs best in the first and
last parts of his tale where the monsters serve more as an
environmental hazard than an adversary to overcome. In those segments,
the human interactions take center stage, and the plot feels more like
straight-up disaster fiction. However, all three sections balance
heroics, cowardice, and avarice to show the full spectrum of human
reaction to crisis and can keep a reader's interest well into the wee
hours of the morning.
Visuals 7/10
Here,
Fujisawa's work is more than competent, but not quite amazing. The
urban landscape of the manga offers few opportunities for impressive
backgrounds and actually leads to some downright laziness in the second
arc (a reader would be pressed to differentiate between the buildings
different corridors). That said, the artist does milk the larger scale
of events in the final segment for a few nifty panoramas but they serve
as punctuation, not functional backdrop for the action in the manga.
Much like in Metro Survive, expressive characters fill the pages of Bio-Meat.
Each hero, villain, and minor actor's admirable traits and foibles read
on in his face, the strong and noble characters appearing clear-eyed
and strong chinned whereas the more villainous and weak characters
possess shifty eyes and disheveled aspects respectively. The long
time-frame of the story also affords Fujisawa the chance to grow up his
main cast from school children into adult heroes in delightful fashion.
While Maaya ages in a predictable manner, the development of Banba into
a muscle-bound bruiser and Kanomiya's blossoming from a creepy little
girl into a hard and beautiful woman by the third installment make
their re-introduction sequence rewarding to read.
Of
course, the real main characters are the bio meat themselves, and here
the mangaka shows both flashes of brilliance and mediocrity. The
Japanese version exudes equal parts practicality and horror. Curled up
like a ball to hide its collection of teeth and mandibles, the creature
resembles something fished out of H. M. Gieger's waste-bin; its design
highlights both the benign purpose these animals serve and the terrible
potential it contains. In contrast, the US incarnation, a monster of
tendrils and one ravenous orifice suffers both from being harder to
draw (as they get bigger and bigger their forms become messier and
messier) and appearing more overtly menacing. This unfortunate
shortcoming robs the bio meat of some of its cleverly constructed
impact and prevents its initial attacks from generating the same level
of horrific imagery that punctuated the first arc's initial, grisly deaths.
Characters 7.5/10
As
characters, the two bio-meat species vary greatly. The U.S.
incarnation, which features in the second arc, displays aggressiveness,
adaptability, and true lethal intent. However, these traits which make
it so interesting also detract from the human elements of the story
during its time in the spotlight. The influence of the tentacled
monster drags the narrative away from Fujisawa's strength--suspenseful
interactions between normal people in extraordinary circumstances--and
places the incident in the hotel firmly in the action genre. In
contrast, the Japanese bio-meat demonstrates only hunger and patience
as its defining characteristics, making it better suited to the
mangaka's preferred form of narrative.
While not as nuanced a cast as the one that drives Metro Survive, Fujisawas collection of deeply flawed individuals stands out as the best part of Bio-Meat.
To represent humans' boundless capacity for greed and hubris, the
mangaka serves up a parade of vile and petty men who desire only to
make the most money off the ravenous bio meat as they can. Across from
them, the three main characters appear suitably heroic. Neither Maaya,
Kanomiya, nor Banba receives the layered development that makes Mishima
such a winning protagonist in the artist's later work, but their
ingenuity, bravery, and sense of humor should win over readers anyway.
Overall 7.6/10
The
action-packed plot, everyman heroes, and grim vision of the future
offer something to any fan with a strong enough stomach to handle the
manga's content. If you're interested in a survival story that plays
out on a larger scale and over a longer period of time, you will find
Bio-Meat visceral, funny, and satisfying.
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