A student filmmaker meets his favourite pornstar who’s recently had a device fused to her wrist, by a time-traveller who turns into a doll, that allows her to control her size - so she can become a giantess if she wants. There’s also a rogue AI that the time-travelling doll-man seemed to be trying to stop and a website that grants wishes that come true. I KNOW, who hasn’t read this same, tired old story a zillion times before, eh? Yeesh, come up with something original, Hiroya Oku!
Of course, I kid, and the first volume of Oku’s new series, Gigant, isn’t bad. I won’t say it’s ever boring and Oku’s very stylish art is pretty to look at, but there’s too many disparate elements being thrown in at once without it being very clear what they have to do with each other so they don’t sit well together.
For example, our protagonists are well-introduced. We get a clear look at the life of Rei, the schoolboy: he’s an aspiring filmmaker but his grades suck, so his dad’s coming down on him hard for that, and he wants a girlfriend. Ditto Chiho, the titular (hyuk) pornstar character: she has an abusive boyfriend, her family are a buncha deadbeats, and her beloved father is dead.
The two live near each other, and the kid watches her movies, but other than that, I’m not sure why the two would be friends after that initial encounter. I guess Chiho’s lonely or something contrived? I’m also not sure what their stories are going forward. She uses her powers for porn (hey, there are worse ways!) while Rei… doesn’t really do anything. And, while both are likeable characters, his story feels entirely superfluous and generically boring (girls, grades, etc.). I guess Chiho’s going to be the lead in his student film, which would just be a dull and obvious development so I hope I’m wrong, but I’d really hate it if she became his girlfriend.
The time-traveller, the rogue AI, the strange wish-granting website - no idea at this point what any of this has to do with one another, if anything. They’re all interesting concepts though random. Oku just kinda throws it all together and the effect is a bit messy.
It’s less sexy than the sci-fi stuff mentioned above but I’d find this series more compelling if it was just about Chiho trying to improve her life by ditching her abusive boyfriend and sorting out her relationship with her family. Maybe she still will - this is just the opening book after all - but, having read half of his last series, Inuyashiki, it seems like Oku tends to abandon character development after a certain point and focuses only on portraying flashy, loud action instead. Which would be a shame if the same happened in Gigant given what he’s accomplished in this book.
The art is very skilful with the photo-realistic backgrounds though the characters are your standard manga designs. I appreciated that Oku wasn’t gratuitously sleazy with Chiho’s pages when he could’ve shown much more, more often. Oku does shamelessly promote his previous books through his characters though, which was more amusingly meta than annoying.
Gigant, Volume 1 does what a successful introductory volume should do and sets up the premise and its main characters well though I’m only really intrigued in one of the two characters (Chiho) while the other is a yawner. Other clumsy plot elements thrown in aside, Hiroya Oku’s done enough in this first book to make me want to come back for volume two to see what happens next - a decent beginning then.
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