A young man walks into a comic store in Baltimore and asks the owner, an Asian lady with broad shoulders, what she would recommend for someone who is a fan of the cyberpunk genre.
“I’m old school,” he says proudly, “I’m into Akira and Ghost in the Shell.”
Her lip piercing gleams as a smile crosses her face. “You heard of Tokyo Ghost?”
She walks away from the cash register counter toward the comic aisles, revealing a Pikachu tail pinned to her pants. She hands him a magazine whose cover shows a brawny man riding an Akira-style motorcycle. He reads it…
Tokyo Ghost hearkens back to the greats, like Akira and Transmetropolitan, and adds new spins to familiar things. Los Angeles is addicted to the web- thousands of shows stream on screens and bio-augmentation gives users super-hero bodies and rushes. Constable Debbie is trying to convince her husband Led to kick his addiction to technology. This lucha-libre style Led is always distracted by shows always playing on his screens covering his eyes (Ahem, Google Glass, I’m looking at you).
It is great and dark and scary. The comic genre is one I have followed for a while, watching as it has matured from the stereotypical super heroes (X-Men and Spiderman) to much darker iterations of those former forms.
Tokyo Ghost is certainly not for the faint hearted. It’s an adrenaline rush that mirrors its world addicted to violence and games. I am curious about the relationship between Debby, an anti-technology constable and her husband Led, an addicted muscular freak. If you’re a fan of Akira and Ghost in the Shell and Judge Dredd, it’s worth a read!
And then what... 