Jeff Macey, the bulldog of Dark Horse Comics' marketing department, virtually dragged me out of the basement ten minutes ago to remind me of this Horsepower column I'd promised to write. "Well, I just wanted to get that upstairs today, because...yeah." he says, after I've spent the last five minutes backpedaling and explaining that I had to get some design work upstairs for Super Manga Blast! It was Shirow stuff from the Appleseed Hypernotes material, an additional dictionary for the Orion book. Why the basement? Well, that Shirow stuff is so full of physics and psycho-spiritual material that it has to be stored in a special, lead and clay lined cell at the bottom of 430 spiraling steps below the licensing department. So, not only was I feeling guilty about not having written this column, but short on breath, sore in the hips, and generally kinda dizzy.
For those of you in the market for sci-fi action manga, there's this other comic book on which I've been working that has been feeling a bit lighter than what you'll find in Shirow's works. Although it won't necessitate my traversing 860 steel stairs once a year, I get the feeling that Cannon God Exaxxion is about to get pretty heavy, against most readers' expectations.
Many manga readers and non-readers alike will recognize the work of Cannon God Exaxxion's creator Kenichi Sonoda. He built his American following with the fantastically sexy and action-packed series Gunsmith Cats. Gaining a reputation for his exacting reproduction drawings of muscle-bound guns and cars, Sonoda created a dedicated and growing audience, baiting those with an appreciation for sexy girls and pure adrenaline.
When the doors of the Gunsmith Cats gun store closed temporarily, Sonoda-sama was freed up to develop a sci-fi story line, building on his reputation of sexy action and work on such animation titles such as Bubblegum Crisis and Gall Force. That storyline was Cannon God Exaxxion, and since 1997, Sonoda's been entertaining Japan with a deceptively cheeky, yet ever-darkening tale of a teen boy whose planet is being colonized by a technologically superior alien race. It's young Hoichi's struggle to save the planet with the assistance of his rakish and genius grandfather, a bevy of buxom and occasionally android female assistants, and a gigantic gun mecha that absolutely destroys everything in its path. And that's part of the subtext in Cannon God Exaxxion. When a giant robot machine walks the earth, there are repercussions. Things get smashed, people die. And that can be tough on a kid, even a street-fighting bad boy like Hoichi.
Readers are treated to a slightly different version of gun obsession in Cannon God Exaxxion. Sonoda takes his attention to detail, some serious appreciation for the physics of ballistics, and a scaled-up imagination of bullet technology to push his love of guns and machines into the atmosphere.
People who know manga and Japanese animation will be quick to point out the numerous clichés in Exaxxion. The initial observation can be deceptive, but the use of anime and manga stereotypes works as a tool and a foil, bridging the reader across known themes and hitting them with buried subtlety, and then turning around and tickling with an inside joke. Sonoda makes sure the characters are very aware of their own well-known archetypes. It makes for a very interesting study, a jaunty read, and a few lessons in the politics of war and occupation.
Cannon God Exaxxion is entering it's third volume of serialized comic-books, the first volume is on the shelves for your reading pleasure, and the second volume is on the way. If you haven't picked it up while visiting your favorite comic shop, grab a copy and take a look. It's some of the best in manga, and that's simply what people have come to expect from Dark Horse Comics.
And that's not just marketing hype, dammit!
Loving You,
Tim Ervin-Gore