Review: Ode to Kirihito

Ode to Kirihito
By Osamu Tezuka
Rated 16+, for older teens
Vertical, $24.95

Warning: Spoilers after the cut!

Don’t be scared off by all the critical raves that Ode to Kirihito has been getting from reviewers. Branding a book a classic can make reading it seem like work, but Kirihito is a very readable manga that stretches the boundaries of the medium to tell a compelling story full of twists and surprises.

The basic plot is laid out in the first chapter: the people of a small country village are suffering from a mysterious illness, Monmow disease, that turns them into dogs. Doctors in a major hospital can’t figure out the cause, so young Dr. Kirihito Osanai is dispatched to the village. We meet Kirihito’s fiancé, Izumi, and his colleague, Dr. Urabe, a toadyish sort who almost immediately shows his dark side by raping Izumi while Kirihito is taking care of a patient.

Things move quickly in the ensuing chapters. Kirihito travels to the mysterious village and soon catches the disease himself. He figures out how to arrest its progress before his transformation is complete, but he cannot reverse it. Doomed to have the face of a dog for the rest of his life, he begins to make his way back, and I was beginning to wonder how Tezuka planned to fill up the other 700 pages of the book.

Actually, the story is just getting under way. It turns out that Kirihito’s superior, Dr. Tatsugaura, sent him away and arranged with the locals to have him catch Monmow disease because Kirihito was a member of the radical young doctors’ faction of the medical association. This is a weak point, because there is no hint of it in the opening sequences—it’s as if Tezuka realized part way through the book that he needed a motive, so he cooked one up out of thin air.

The core of the book is built around two journeys. On his way home, Kirihito is kidnapped and taken to Taiwan by a depraved rich man, escapes with the help of Reika, an exotic dancer, makes his way through the Middle East with a shady oil executive as his guide, and eventually returns to Japan to seek his revenge on Tatsugaura, facing rejection, persecution, and danger along the way.

Meanwhile, Urabe travels to South Africa to deliver a paper on Monmow and is shocked by the racism he sees there. He rescues a nun with the disease, Sister Helen, and brings her back to Japan. Then he sets off to find Kirihito, and as he retraces his colleague’s steps, the events of the first part of the book become clearer. Kirihito’s chief motivation is revenge, but Urabe is trying frantically to set things right.

While Kirihito is a straightforward good guy who is cast into adversity, Urabe has both a strong moral compass and a dark side. Both are interesting to watch, but Tezuka’s graphic descriptions of Urabe’s internal struggles are among the best pieces of art in the book.

There are a few weak points where Tezuka reaches for an easy answer, as when Kirihito cures a sexual serial killer with simple hypnosis and when Urabe rapes Helen because, he claims, he has fallen in love with her. But overall the writing is strong, with plenty of twists and turns, characters that are complicated enough to be interesting, and a satisfying conclusion.

Although the name “Kirihito” is the Japanese form of “Christ,” this book is not an allegory. The most Christ-like figure is Sister Helen, who bears the indignities of her condition with grace, and at one point Urabe compares her sufferings explicitly with those of Christ. Tezuka makes other references to Christianity, but they aren’t central to the story. More fundamental is Tezuka’s world view. Monmow is essentially a reversion to the primitive, caused by drinking water contaminated with silt from ancient deposits. But the disease only affects the sufferer physically; the truly primitive response comes from outsiders who are either fascinated or repelled by humans who look like dogs. This theme of prejudice and rejection is what really drives the book, whether it’s the Taiwanese tycoon who kidnaps Kirihito as a novelty in his human menagerie, the South Africans who try to kill Sister Helen because they refuse to believe a white person can get Monmow, or the locals who lock Kirihito in a cage because he looks like a dog. Yet at every stop there are good characters as well who help the Monmow victims despite their appearance. And in the end, deeds trump looks, as both Kirihito and Sister Helen devote their lives to serving others and become beloved members of their communities.

Despite its length and some serious themes, you never forget that Ode to Kirihito is a comic book. The structure is episodic, with each chapter containing a single adventure that pushes the overall story along, and there is plenty of action and suspense. While the settings are realistic, Tezuka draws faces in a cartoony style and makes good use of comics’ conventions, showing two doctors’ heads flying off, for example, when they are yelled at by a superior. Some of the caricatures may strike the modern eye as racist and outdated, but Tezuka’s faces are undeniably expressive. In his Buddha series, the juxtaposition of cute characters with serious subject matter was often disturbing, but in Kirihito the characters are better matched with the story.

Even without the story, this book would be worth getting for the art alone. Tezuka’s depictions of mountains, villages, and landscapes are awesome, but his most imaginative panels are those in which a character undergoes a deep change. Often he isolates a face or figure in pure darkness; other times, he uses physical disintegration as a metaphor for spiritual turmoil.

At 800 pages, Ode to Kirihito is a bit unwieldy to read, but it’s certainly good value for the money. The paper has a pleasantly creamy cast, and while I wish it were a bit thicker, so ghosts of the images on the opposite side would not be visible, I can see where that might not be practical. While I prefer unflipped manga, Vertical’s decision to flip the book doesn’t seem to have done violence to Tezuka’s art. And the cover, with a slider that reveals Kirihito’s two faces, dog and man, is a clever statement of the premise of the book.

There is something very satisfying about reading this entire story in a single volume. Breaking it up would have diluted the effect, and Vertical deserves a lot of credit for keeping it intact.

Ode to Kirihito may have its flaws, but in the end it works well, both as a gripping tale and as a thoughtful, imaginative work of sequential art.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.)