Opus - Reviews

Even the best storytellers tend to have a certain type of story they specialize in telling over all others. George Lucas was at his best when making films that relied on fun, emotions, adventure, and didn't take themselves too seriously. Miyazaki has a trademark of strong female leads coupled with environmental and anti-war themes. There's a reason Alfred Hitchcock concentrated on tense thrillers, not gushy romances. Satoshi Kon excelled in telling stories where the lines between fiction and reality got extremely blurry, and this early manga by him is no exception. But does it stand up to his later efforts in film?

STORY

What if the greatest critic of your story was the character you chose to kill off in the shocking twist ending? When a mangaka finds himself stuck inside his own creation, trying to recover the last page of his graphic novel from a character trying to change the ending, he assumes he's cracked up under deadline pressure. But as events unfold, he begins losing his certainty that this is all in his head. And while the writer is supposed to be the god the story, it turns out not everyone in his story is happy with how he's running their universe.

This plot runs on 'rule-of-cool' and a great deal of meta humor. It makes occasional stabs at the nature of God and a handful of other themes, but never really drives them home. The action, thrills, and 'inside a manga' setting are the core of the story. The ending is... well it's a meta-twist, which is perhaps the most fitting way to end a story like this, but be prepared for something non-traditional. The trippy, corkscrewing plot is the highlight of this manga.

ART

Another strong showing, with its fair share of crazy visuals befitting a mind-screwer like this one. Background quality can vary from scene to scene, although this is actually worked into the story at times, such as when our Main Character ends up running into the background scenery and crowds- or when a certain building must be important because it was drawn in high detail. The character designs are decent, but nothing truly unique or memorable. Page composition is solid, I had little trouble following the sequence of events.

CHARACTERS

Alas, only a serviceable showing in this department. Given that this is a one volume action-heavy manga there are certain limits that need to be placed on expectations for character depth, but there is enough space that a little more might have been done to characterize and develop the main cast. They largely stick to their archetypes and don't do anything too far out of the ordinary. The main villain has hints of greater potential, with implications that our MC created him not just as a cool character, but to subconsciously indulge negative aspects of his personality. Unfortunately, that subplot is introduced too late for proper exploration. The characters just do their job here.

OVERALL

Not his best work, but Satoshi Kon delivers a fun ride and a strong showing in 'Opus'. Fans of his later works will definitely be interested. Heck, fans of 'Bakuman' looking for something a bit more mature just might like this too. The average anime/manga fan should definitely consider giving this manga a shot, but it isn't quite good enough for me to give it a 'drop everything' reccommendation.

Going into this, I basically had to decide to abandon all sense of logic and latent desires for coherent worldbuilding and just accept the surrealism. And even then, I still found myself confused and off-balance and maybe even a tad frustrated, but I gotta admit that I also found myself riveted. In addition to the adrenaline-filled action scenes, this manga also acts as an interesting contemplation on free will, the ethics of manipulating destiny (like in a time travel situation), and divine predestination. This idea of someone entering the world of a story has become its own subgenre in the modern day (what with the otome game villainess stories and whatnot), but Opus honestly didn't feel reminiscent of those stories at all. It felt more like a blend of Stranger Than Fiction and The Matrix.

The biggest hook of the entire story was "How will the story-within-the-story end up getting resolved? How will Chikara Nagai wrap up the final chapter of Resonance?" Throughout everything, we see Nagai struggling with this question. We see the various characters clashing with Nagai because of this question. We see some level of acceptance on the part of Satoko, once fe realizes that the real world is just as filled with traumatic events and tragedies as the comic was. This question of how things would end loomed over the entire manga, much more than in most manga. And then...the series was dropped with no resolution to this question. And that honestly brought this story down to a 7/10 for me. It was sitting at a solid 8/10 throughout, and if the ending had been satisfying, I probably would've rated it as a 9/10. But then it just---bleh. (Note: There is a half-official 20th chapter, but that ending is even less satisfying than it just ending on a cliffhanger after chapter 19, so...yea, not much help there).

The artwork is gorgeous. The backgrounds feel very fleshed out and detailed. And the characters are pretty nice as well. I also appreciated the way that sketchiness or white space or cracks in the airspace were mixed in, enhancing the story.