Brave Dan

nathandouglasdavis Mar 5, 2021

2

I can't say I enjoyed this all that much. It's just a series of encounters, often with pretty forced transitions between them. There are several clashes and chase scenes. It keeps coming back to the idea of sparing people who could be dangerous versus killing them, with the implicit moral of the story being that people/tigers should always be given a chance to redeem themselves (i.e. they shouldn't be killed). Indigenous peoples like the Ainu (and the Uyghur) are somewhat central and primarily function as a justification for the existence of an ancient treasure, though I think the author also wanted to bring attention to (what fe perceived as) their cultures and communities slowly dying. A prophecy is included midway through, as a way to force some intrigue into the goings-ons. The nature of the treasure is the climactic reveal of the comic. It's definitely weird that Kotan so easily abandoned any attempts at finding feir parents. And how that aspect of the plot was basically just dropped. It's also weird how the whole "Chosen Child" idea didn't seem to play any real role in anything. And if fe was Chosen, then why didn't the guardians recognize fem as such? It's also weird that apparently the cave could be found and entered without having all three keys...even though the entire premise up to that point was built around the idea that all three keys were needed. And it is insanely stupid how Dr. Hanamaru says "But the world is still too dangerous of a place right now. There are still many people like Zoger. We have to wait until the time is right." As though the mixture of "good" and "bad" people in the human population is any different nowadays than it was in the past. Or that the mixture will somehow change in the future. There will always be "many people like Zoger" in the world, and the author's implicit suggestion (through Hanamaru) that the human population can fundamentally improve is ill-thought-out and avoidant of any attempt to grapple with the ethics of power.