Posted by twittyconv on February 01st 2008 to
Reviews , “Morning glory in the woods”, is an award winning Japanese graphic novel.
The artist, Gouda Mamora, is faous for his distinctive drawings and characters. The art looks quite elementary, but actually is known to be quite descriptive and realistic. The story is about a young man, Naoki. He is from a rich family with loving parents and a beautiful and intelligent lover. The story starts off with Naoki’s first day at his new work, prison. He works as a jailer, looking over the criminals who are sentenced to death. As he works here, Naoki is forced to think about the definition of being “sentenced to death”. Among the prinsoners, there are people who have repented for their crimes, and some are even innocent people who have been charged wrongly. He faces the true depth of the “forest”, as the author views the prison. Meeting different prisoners who do not have a future set out for them, it is hard for even the readers not to have a deep thought about the death sentence, where people are killed, and is justified by law.
Shikeishuu 042, “Prisoner 042″, is another story dealing with the subject death. This story by Yua Kotegawa, is one of this author’s most famous works.
Set in the near future, the government is coming up of different ways to punish prisoners in replace of the death sentence. They come up with an experiment: they install a small chip inside the prinsoner’s brain and make the prisoner participate in voluntary activities, such as cleaning up schools, working in factories, or any other simple labour. If the prisoner is enraged so that he is on the verge of murdering, the chip reacts and blows up. It is a very dangerous plan and it goes against many moral rights, but the experiment goes on.
The first “guinea pig”’s name is Ryohei Tajima, also called #042. He is a prisoner who has killed 7 people working under the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) in a tournament to earn money. Unlike most predictions, Ryohei fits in quite well into his new workplace, a public highschool. At first, all the students are frightened and enraged at 042, cursing at him behind his back. However, 042 meets a blind girl who shows kindness to him, and he starts to open up to the rest of the school, as the school to him. Another crew of people who are related to 042, are the research crew. Along with his own counselor, Shina, the research crew become attatched to this murderer who can die any minute. 042 befriends more than 100 people and learns the beauty of love before his end.
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