The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.
If you’re looking to pick future stars from the current Shonen Jump lineup, Skeleton Double is probably not the smart money. (And not just because it’s running in Jump+ rather than Shonen Jump proper. Fine distinction, that.) Frankly, it just really isn’t good enough—at least not yet—to inspire that kind of confidence. It’s also pretty strange in a way totally different than that of the likes of, say, Chainsaw Man or the utterly bonkers Dandadan (which, really, I should get to writing about that at some point). Instead, it possesses an antiseptic half-surreality that places it totally perpendicular to most of what’s going on in the magazine, its direct affiliates, and, indeed, in the battle shonen genre in general right now. I wouldn’t call the manga great by any means, but it’s definitely compellingly weird. Enough so that if it can manage to hang on for a few more volumes beyond the brief 13 chapters that currently exist, we might be surprised.
The very short version of the premise is this; eight years ago, Yodomi Arakawa’s father was hoisted into the sky outside of Shinjuku Station and twisted to death. A violent and bizarre end for an ordinary businessman. Back in the present, Arakawa’s life is haunted by the tragedy, and the normalcy he’s worked hard to try to maintain regardless is shattered upon the appearance of a mysterious talking skull, Yamamoto. From here, Arakawa is sucked into a strange world of strange powers, skeletal beasts straight out of Gideon The Ninth, and a brewing war between a government agency that seeks to control both and the secret “Gyugess Society” that wants to use them to solve the world’s ills. Also, Yamamoto is responsible for Arakawa’s father’s death. Whoops!
On its surface, it’s a decent setup, but right from the jump, Skeleton Double runs into walls of clunky exposition, and much of the earliest stretch of the manga is let down by art that only sometimes rises above “functional.” This does a lot to obscure the manga’s genuine strengths, which are mostly writing-side; chiefly a very dry sense of humor and some interesting, briefly-floated ideas about class conflict. The characterization is strong, too, but only in a sidelong, obfuscated way. Arakawa himself seems almost comically devoid of any notable personality traits, but recent chapters imply that this is less his actual personality and more a façade adopted to cope with the loss of his father. Yoroibata, a member of the aforementioned government agency, is meanwhile utterly inscrutable, shuffling between weird antics like brewing coffee while teaching Arakawa how to fight in one chapter, and totally stomping the Gyugess Society folks in another. Toru Tatara, the closest thing the manga so far has to a main antagonist, is a broad-shouldered, spectacled fellow with braids with a hammy personality who is introduced doing a full bow. It’s an odd mix of total seriousness and outright camp, and Skeleton Double seems pretty happy to toggle between the two. Combine that with the aforementioned dry humor and the occasional sarcastic narration, and you have a manga that certainly has its own identity, even if it’s not a terribly flashy one.
It’s hard to tell how intentional all that is, but one has to imagine that at least part of it is on purpose. There is after all, a particularly great moment in here—perhaps the manga’s single best scene so far—where, after several chapters of being introduced to urban fantasy proper nouns, one of the Gyugess’ soldiers shouts out that a “cypress” is attacking them. As you turn the page, and have the opportunity to wonder what a “cypress” could possibly be, you see this, a beautifully-rendered tree crashing into their base. It is an almost perfect punchline, and if Skeleton Double gets axed before it can truly get off the ground, I think Tokaku Kondou may well have a future in writing comedy manga. (Don’t laugh! It worked out just fine for Aka Akasaka.)
Visually-speaking, a friend of mine correctly pointed out that the casual wear of most of Gyugess’ members gives them a sort of reverse-Jojo character feel, and really does drive home the fact that these powers have been foisted onto utterly ordinary people. They are Just Guys. Guys with superpowers now, sure, but Just Guys nonetheless.
This is perhaps most obvious with the former cab driver Kunikumo, who is Arakawa’s first major opponent fought on equal footing in the manga. Kunikumo is an old man, using his skeleton powers partly to stave off the Alzheimer’s that’d otherwise prevent him from living an ordinary life with his granddaughter. But even this isn’t cut and dry; we soon learn that Kunikumo killed his granddaughter’s parents himself, using his “Quantum” power (which sinks things into solid surfaces) to condemn them to the absolutely hellish death of falling to the center of the Earth. (Yeah, like that one Batman Beyond episode that gave us all a minor phobia of the Earth’s core as kids. Or was that just me?) The obvious sympathy angle is undercut by his brutal methods, and even when Arakawa eventually defeats him and he has his obligate realization that he’s been the bad guy, that too is shadowed. Look at the narration here, its blunt declaration of “he discarded what he wanted to protect….” Is that intended to drive the point home? If so, why does it almost feel like it’s mocking him?
What is the point of all this, anyway? Skeleton Double‘s most interesting trait is also its greatest weakness; the fact that thirteen chapters in, it’s basically still a total cipher. Not that any mangaka—any artist period—is under any obligation to explain their work in excruciating detail to their audience, but it’s a little unusual for a Shonen Jump manga, which are generally pretty straightforward. (And given the entire chapter devoted to how skeleton powers work, I get the sense that if Kondou wanted to explain things in excruciating detail, they would.) You can, from a certain angle, also read elements of it as parodic, but that doesn’t square with the honest attempt at emotional rawness in its most recent chapters. (Reasonable people will also disagree on how well that attempt actually lands. Post-hoc villain backstories aren’t exactly rare in this genre.)
It is totally possible that all of this is nothing more than the result of Skeleton Double actively finding its footing as it serializes. Its mangaka is, after all, new to the medium, with only the surreal comedy oneshot “The God Who Can’t Clean Up” previously under their belt. If so, maybe the real value of Skeleton Double doesn’t come from the story itself, so much as having the opportunity to watch a shonen mangaka work out the format’s structures in real time, seeing how they can bend them to their will and how they’re forced to compromise, where the bones of it lie.
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