No. 5, Volume 1 by Taiyo Matsumoto Review

In the distant future, there are a small group of superhero soldiers who go by numbers rather than names. No. 5 kills another number, so all the other numbers decide to hunt down No. 5.

Doesn’t sound too complicated does it? It even sounds downright basic! And yet, this is a barely comprehensible manga. No. 5, Volume 1 (this edition collects the first two books so you get double the drivel) was a staggeringly badly written and incompetently told pseudo-story, though Taiyo Matsumoto’s artistic ability is undeniable.

No attempt is made at creating characters that mean anything. It’s appropriate that the main characters all have numbers rather than names because they’re such indistinct ciphers that they may as well simply be stand-ins for the spaces where characters should exist in a story.

The world-building is more nonsense. Animals the size of mountains, some animals talk, the leader of the world wears a bunny outfit, some characters have magical powers, some don’t, for no reasons. Nothing about this world makes sense because Matsumoto doesn’t even try.

And the story - sure, it’s the most basic cat and mouse storyline, but beyond that, who knows what’s going on why. What does No. 5 want, or why did he kill the other number? What’s the purpose of these numbers, and what is anyone trying to accomplish besides capturing No. 5? It’s amazing Matsumoto gets so much out of so little - though it helps that he can simply blather on endlessly when he doesn’t really have to make any of it make sense.

His art style though is undoubtedly impressive. The technical skill alone is quite something, but to draw such inventive, trippy images, for hundreds of pages (and this is the first volume in a series), is amazing, considering the consistent breadth of imagination required to pull this off. He manages to create imagery for a world that feels both futuristic and ancient at the same time. As much as I didn’t enjoy reading this book, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t admire the art.

But I couldn’t get past the low level of writing or gibberish story. Whenever I read Dadaist bullshit like this, I wonder if that kind of storytelling approach isn’t a convenient excuse for the creator’s inability to actually write and tell a story well. I’ve never read any of Taiyo Matsumoto’s other manga though so I can’t say if this is a one-off experimental piece or whether they’re all this godawful.

Maybe if you like Alejandro Jodorowsky or Jonathan Hickman’s similarly bunkum comics you’ll get something out of this one, otherwise I wouldn’t bother - Taiyo Matsumoto’s a somewhat niche manga creator for a reason.