ゴールデンマン(1)

A fun manga pastiche on western superhero comics, and specifically the Marvel universe. Golden Man is basically an Iron Man type hero who basically lives in New York and his arch-nemesis is pretty much Doc Ock. So you might be wondering with all this stuff based on something else, what's the catch? Well, it turns out ol' Golden Man has amnesia and doesn't remember any of it! He doesn't know who he is, he doesn't know about superheroes and villains, and he doesn't recognize any teammates, but there are still villains out there needing to be fought so he has to put on the suit and figure it all out anway (it also wasn't lost on me that a guy with amnesia has the Shadow the Hedgehog haircut either).

The superheroing is very fun and action packed, but the real story is the mystery of just who this guy is and how his teammates try to keep him alive. The rogues gallery is fun with how they play with some of the more famous comic villains, there's a Captain Cold type guy who also has the superspeed of his traditional nemesis, the Flash, and the final chapter introduces what seems to be a Geisha version of Psylocke. Language-wise I had a much easier time reading this than the actual Doc Ock Spider-Man manga I read a few weeks ago which had a ton of made-up technobabble, but this is fairly everyday, informal vocab with some useful justice-related words.

The worldbuilding is also quite interesting and pretty subtly doled out. This universe is kind of like an early 2000's superhero movie in the sense that there's plenty of villains, but only one superhero (like think how Captain America or the X-Men didn't exist in the world of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies). We don't really see what's going on outside of Neo York, but Golden Man's presence makes it a lot less restrictive since other cities apparently require a somewhat dystopian military presence to ward off villains. I'm hoping they'll expand on that some more in future volumes because it is a very unique twist in what's otherwise a direct pastiche of the typical comic book world.

The art is also a good blend between Manga and Western comic styles, the faces are expressive and backgrounds are full of detail. Golden Man has quite the appetite so the obligatory gorgeously-rendered food makes quite a few appearances as well. Not all of the supporting cast is too fleshed out at this point, but his not-quite-romance with the team mechanic, Blues (who I thought was called Bruce since they spell it ブルース but they do show it in English eventually) is quite funny and I love the team secretary losing it over the amount of collateral damage the battles cause.

Overall it's playful and fun if you want some manga-styled superheroing and found the official manga efforts of DC and Marvel a bit too dense to penetrate.