Demo Disc Vol. 22: Underground & Underexposed?

Debuting on March 12, 1991, Monthly Shonen Gangan marked the start of Enix's foray into publishing, and it's still running to this very day under the ownership of Square Enix, alongside a cavalcade of various offshoot magazines, like Monthly GFantasy, Gangan Joker, Young Gangan, etc. While not on the tip of most anime/manga fans' tongues, Shonen Gangan has its own share of iconic, popular, & remembered manga throughout the magazine's history, including The Violinist of Hameln, Dragon Quest: The Emblem of Roto (alongside many other DQ manga), 666 Satan/O-Parts Hunter, Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning, Haré+Guu, Soul Eater, Magical Circle Guru Guru, Corpse Princess, Blast of Tempest, & the most beloved of them all... two(!) different runs of Papuwa; there was also some forgotten series called Fullmetal Alchemist that ran in there, too, I guess. Anyway, for this volume of Demo Disc I want to focus on a manga that also ran in the pages of Shonen Gangan, one that does admittedly have a bit of nostalgia for me, personally, via its anime adaptation, but at the same time is hard for me to tell whether it would be up there with those other iconic titles or not, despite running alongside many of them for the better part of a decade in Japan.

Do we have ourselves a bit of an "Underdog from the Underground"?

Born in Hyogo Prefecture on September 22, 1977, Akinobu Uraku is a mangaka with a surprisingly short history & resume to his name. He first placed second in the fourth ever Enix 21st Century Manga Awards with his one-shot story Youjo Mahou Shori Han/Surplus Magic Processing Team, even getting it published in the February 1997 issue of Monthly GFantasy. This got him the chance to publish a proper serialized manga, resulting in the debut of Tokyo Underground in Shonen Gangan's very first issue of 1998. The series would continue until March of 2005, totaling 84 chapters across 14 volumes (plus a quartet of novels written by Mirei Tachibana, under her Junko Shimada alias), during which a 26-episode TV anime adaptation by Studio Pierrot would air in prime time on TV Tokyo throughout 2002; Uraku himself even has a one-line cameo in Episode 1 as a random high school student. Interestingly enough, the week after Tokyo Underground's final episode aired, director Hayato Date debuted his next anime adaptation... Naruto. Geneon Entertainment would then license & release the Tokyo Underground anime in North America throughout 2005 & 2006, even getting it aired on TV in 2007 on G4TechTV Canada's Anime Current programming block; the manga has never been licensed for English release. Since then, Discotek Media eventually license rescued the anime & released it on SD-BD in 2018, though it's currently not available via streaming anywhere. Tokyo Underground also received a three-minute anime promo in 2001 as part of the 4-Magazine Combination Special Anime Video by Enix (see my recent piece on Bus Gamer for more details), with most of the voice cast from that promo later reprising their roles for the TV anime. But enough about anime, as we're here for manga; I will reference the anime here & there, though, for comparison.

After finishing up Tokyo Underground, Akinobu Uraku would return with his second series, Onikiri-sama no Hakoiri Musume/Lord Demon Slayer's Daughter in a Box, which ran irregularly in Shonen Gangan from 2006 to 2010 for just 22 chapters across 4 volumes; it'd get a drama CD in 2009, but no anime adaptation. Following the end of that series, Akinobu Uraku has effectively disappeared from the industry completely, having never made another manga since, & he looks to have no social media presence whatsoever, essentially making him impossible to find in today's world. In fact, neither of Uraku's two manga series look to be even sold digitally in Japan, though Square Enix does offer a digital version of Onikiri-sama's first chapter as a preview (Tokyo Underground isn't even listed on that same site!), which could mean that Uraku himself has become so reclusive that he's become incommunicado. It must be remembered that manga is technically creator-owned comics, so if a creator has become impossible to contact (& has no surrogate to act in their place) then it could literally become impossible to legally re-release their work, even if the original publisher still technically has the rights to do so; still, the Tokyo Underground anime got re-licensed, so who knows what's going on with Akinobu Uraku. Regardless, the first 47 chapters of Tokyo Underground were fan translated long ago, which equates to the first 8 volumes & the first chapter of Volume 9 (~56% of the series); coincidentally, this covers just barely beyond what the TV anime adapted. So let's see, at least in part, if Tokyo Underground truly earned its place of running alongside the likes of Hameln, Haré+Guu, FMA, O-Parts Hunter, & (near the end) even Soul Eater, or if it's just an indication that (Square) Enix is simply less cutthroat than a publisher like Shueisha notoriously is.

Deep below Tokyo, even further down than its subway system, is the giant subterranean world known as "Underground", a place filled with people who have the ability to control the very elements themselves, with an organization known only as "The Company" ruling over all. On April 6, 1998, Company member Chelsea Rorec, who has control over gravity, decides to take Ruri Sarasa, the "Maiden of Life" that she's working for as a bodyguard, away from The Company & Underground, bringing her to the surface world; The Company sends warriors after them to retrieve Ruri, for their own purposes. After managing to escape a scuffle, Chelsea & Ruri hide out in a house, only to be found by high school freshmen Rumina Asagi & his best friend Ginnosuke Isuzu. Despite it going against Rumina's wish for a "rose-colored high school life", as he had hoped to finally move away from his past as the strongest fighter in middle school, Rumina & Gin agree to house the two girls & protect them, mainly because Rumina instantly falls for Ruri... only for Rumina to be killed by Company higher-up (& fire user) Seki instantly upon trying to help Chelsea out in battle. Ruri uses her power to revive Rumina, something that's never been done before, which somehow also gives him power over wind, an element no one in Underground has control over. After defeating Seki, Ruri eventually gets captured a week later by the duo of Teil Ashford & Pairon, two of The Company's strongest members (& both water users). Now it's up to Rumina, Chelsea, & Ginnosuke to head down into Underground & rescue Ruri, who The Company wish to use to revive the "Ron", artificially-made dragons created by the scientists who used Underground long ago for their own experiments, in order to enact revenge on the surface world for trapping all of them below the surface when things got out of control for said scientists.

Tokyo Underground makes an interesting first impression with Volume 1, as it doesn't really rush into things all that much. Instead, it gives a general & basic idea behind the concept of Underground itself (i.e. it's an entire underground society filled with people who can control elements), but doesn't really explain much of anything regarding Chelsea, Ruri, & The Company beyond "Chelsea wants to take Ruri away from The Company, seemingly for their own safety", leaving Rumina & Ginnosuke to essentially just have to take the female duo at face value. In fact, Ruri isn't actually taken back to Underground by Teil & Pairon until the end of Chapter 8 early in Volume 2, & after some training Rumina, Chelsea, & Ginnosuke don't even start their venture into Underground until the very end of Chapter 11, which is the literal end of Volume 2. The reason why this is so interesting mainly comes down to the fact that Shonen Gangan is a monthly magazine, so Akinobu Uraku (& Enix, in turn) essentially were asking readers to wait pretty much an entire year before the titular world beneath the surface would even really be featured in any major fashion. It's a remarkable amount of restraint, one that trusts that readers would be patient & willing to wait to build up to it. In comparison, Weekly Shonen Jump is sometimes derided for its history of putting the axe to many potentially interesting manga before a seeming "majority" of them even reach halfway into a solid year of weekly serialization; by the way, we'll dig into that subject later this summer.

So, taking that in mind, do we at least have an interesting cast to get behind within that first year of monthly serialization for Tokyo Underground? To be fair, the characterization at the start is rather straightforward, but it's just enough to get a feel for our primary four characters. Rumina is a pretty easy to grasp main character, a teenager who's essentially lived a life of delinquency & finally wants to leave it all behind for a romanticized simple life, but deep down just can't change his penchant for fighting back; he even wears a headband almost constantly for much of what I'm covering, only ditching it fully after Volume 8. He's also very easily swayed, as all it takes is for Ruri to hold his hands when she asks if she & Chelsea can stay at his house for protection, and he instantly falls for her. Then there's Ginnosuke, who in these early chapters is more or less your standard meek nerd character whose eyes are hidden beneath giant glasses, complete with swirls on the lenses for comedic effect; naturally, the glasses eventually come off at points, revealing that he's actually kind of handsome. He's been Rumina's best friend since kindergarten & is always there for him, right down to being just as willing to head down into Underground alongside Rumina & Chelsea to rescue Ruri, despite his utter lack of fighting ability; the entire idea of even heading into Underground to rescue Ruri is Ginnosuke's. This gets rectified in Volume 3, though, when Ginnosuke (alone) meets Sui, an inventor who has his own vendetta against The Company (they kidnapped his girlfriend Hexa during a raid for element users) & teaches Ginnosuke how to build & use a Renki/Spirit Gun (literally a "Practice Spirit Gun"), an old invention of the scientists which can fire off elemental blasts, giving Gin more of a fighting chance... eventually; Sui also becomes a recurring ally from then on out.

However, as admitted in the "Perfect Guidebook" for Tokyo Underground, Akinobu Uraku's primary motivation for becoming a mangaka was to able to draw cute girls, so while our lead character is a guy the actual majority of our heroes are actually young ladies. Starting off we have Chelsea Rorec, who in many ways is similar to Rumina in that she's a "punch first, ask questions later" kind of gal, but she also knows how to be compassionate when need be, primarily when it comes to Ruri. That said, she continually refers to Ginnosuke as "Glasses/Nerdy Guy", much like how Rumina always calls her "Blondie", & she almost never refers to Rumina by name for everything I'm covering, so she still needs to learn to be a little more personable. Ruri, in comparison, is an absolute innocent who simply wants to have a peaceful & happy life, quickly befriending people after meeting them & placing her absolute trust in them, which in turn makes those people not want to let her down. The rest are all Company workers who wind up siding against their "employer" at some point, starting with Ciel Messiah, a little girl who has control over electricity; the anime's official translation uses "Shiel" (which isn't pronounced the way it looks), but I'm going with what the katakana actually is. After her initial introduction as the second person to take on Rumina in Volume 1, she later become Ruri's new bodyguard when she's captured, but after finding out that Pairon plans to sacrifice Ruri to revive the Ron (& after Ruri had offered to be a "big sister" to Ciel, giving her comfort), Ciel stages her own escape for Ruri, becoming just as willing to give her life for Ruri as Chelsea is. Then there's the "Chelsea Rorec Fan Club", a trio of young ladies who are mega-fans of Chelsea's. First there's Shalma/Sharma Ruphis (either one is plausible), an ice user whose obsession with Chelsea comes from the "I must surpass her" page book, resulting in the two generally having an icy (ha!) relationship. Then there's Emilia Runrarif (though I think "Lunaleaf" is a better romanization), who's the calm & reasonable one of the trio, quickly offering advice & assistance to Rumina & the others after meeting them. Finally, there's Jilherts Mesett, easily the most fanatical of the trio who takes any slight or casualness towards Chelsea with absolute rage; she also might just be straight up gay for Chelsea, depending on how you look at her. Like Ginnosuke, Emilia & Jilherts have no real combat ability of their own, but unlike Ginnosuke tend to avoid engaging in combat, acting more as moral & (at least once in what I read) strategic support, when need be.

While the main villain of Tokyo Underground is technically Kashin, Head of The Company, he actually only makes the rare appearance in this first half (though his presence is more than felt come the end of what I read), so our main villain to focus on is Pairon. One of The Company's seconds-in-command, Pairon is utterly ruthless & unrepentant in his actions, while his mastery is water is so powerful that he actually controls pure water (which is a poor conductor of electricity, removing a key weakness he'd otherwise have) & can even take control of the water in one's own body, when truly pushed. In comparison, Teil's mastery over water is in being able to compress large amounts of it into things like swords & daggers (a nice little way to give people with similar powers their own unique quirks), and though he's initially shown as being the main rival to Rumina early on, he actually is taken out of the picture early in Volume 4, only returning right at the start of Volume 9, where (to my knowledge) he becomes a sort of rivalrous ally of Rumina's for the remainder of the manga; in regards to the anime, this means that Teil stops appearing after Episode 11, & then is never seen again. Meanwhile, Seki is interesting in that he's seen all the way in the beginning when he initially kills Rumina, but then becomes more or less a secondary character, having a high rank that looks to rival Pairon but otherwise doesn't get directly involved much. However, some of his actions, like preventing Pairon from killing Ciel for trying to escape with Ruri (under the explanation that the Maiden's bodyguard is under his jurisdiction, not Pairon's), does show an interesting long game with him & where exactly he stands. There's also the last of The Company's higher-ups, Suijen, who is shown to be the least combat-focused of them all, instead dealing more with bureaucracy throughout this part of the manga, though he shows to have his own feared presence in small bits.

Also of note is Akinobu Uraku's common usage of non-Japanese names throughout Tokyo Underground, with Chinese being the most common, from characters like Pairon (literally "White Dragon") & Sui (literally "Green Jade") to the simple ranks of fighters within The Company, namely Supei (literally "Master Warrior") for proper elemental users & Inpei (literally "Shadow Warrior") for the generic masked grunts. The heavy usage of Chinese was apparently inspired by Kabukicho, which had its post-war redevelopment heavily influenced by Chinese residents & business-people. That being said, we also have other languages represented via names, like English (Chelsea), French (Ciel), Indian or Persian (Sharma/Shalma), Italian (Emilia), gibberish (Jilherts), etc., and it helps give the series a uniquely international flair. Teil reveals in Volume 4 that Underground's scientists "took in" (i.e. bought) children from around the world for their experiments back in the day, a.k.a. the various characters in this series after they've now grown up, so there's actually a good reason for all of the non-Japanese names here. I mean, even something like "Teil" is actually a real world name, as it's a variant of the name "Teal"; Jilherts, though, looks to be 100% fake & was likely just Uraku trying too hard.

The anime sadly skips over this fun little bit.
To be fair, Rumina & Chelsea do make for a fun couple, visually.

But a multinational cast of characters can only do so much if the story they're housed within doesn't deliver, so how is Tokyo Underground in that regard? Honestly, at least for the first four volumes, it's kind of a self-contradictory situation, as it both feels like its going by too slowly while also being a brisk read. Uraku himself actually addressed this in both the Perfect Guidebook & even the author's notes in certain volumes, stating that because of his attempts to deliver "100%" at all times he sometimes would "stray/wander" from initial plans, and sometimes he wouldn't always have something planned out fully in advance, which when combined with the monthly deadlines could create problems; in other words, he was a guy still relatively new to manga, learning & growing on the job. Because of this, there is a bit of a feeling that it takes a little while for the story to really get out of the initial set up in the first two volumes (again, it took a whole year of chapters for Rumina & Co. to actually enter Underground), while the next two volumes still feel like they're introducing various characters that will play larger roles over the rest of the series; as for the anime, the entire first half covers these four volumes, so it can feel a little slow there, too. However, that's not to say that the first 1/3 or so of Tokyo Underground, as a whole, is boring by any means, because it certainly isn't. Uraku's panel-to-panel pacing is rather consistent & flows well, though there is the moment here & there where he admittedly could have slowed down just a little, and it never feels like the manga is wasting your time, resulting in each of these first four volumes being very fast-paced & kinetic to read.

Volume 5 is interesting because it focuses almost exclusively on Rumina & Co. having to deal with a special squad of Pairon's, made up of convicts & Death Row inmates who are codenamed after their respective powers (Sound, Smoke, Shadow, Heat), plus a brainwashed Hexa that Sui has to deal with, with our heroes getting the closest yet to retrieving Ruri. Volume 6 sees Uraku bring back a seemingly ancillary character, Rou the magnetism user (who Chelsea & Rumina fought in Volume 3), now with his talented little brother Korin in tow, but in the end this conflict is more a means to an end, as everyone is screwed over by Pairon, who detonates a bomb & sends everyone to the Slums, the lowetst section of Underground. If Volumes 1 & 2 comprise Tokyo Underground's first "story arc" (taking place on the surface), & Volumes 3 to 6 comprise a second one (taking place in Underground's "First Level"), then Volume 7 starts a third overall story arc that focuses on the Slums, which is home to the resistance that fights the Company, something only rarely brought up throughout the manga up to what I'm covering. This "arc" goes beyond what's been translated for the manga & (going off of the scattered Japanese tankouban I own) is still a focus throughout Volume 10 & beyond, likely being the longest overall part of the entire manga. For the anime, it adapts more or less 100% accurately until it reaches Volume 7 with Episode 20. From then up through the final episode it's the same overall story, but with differences & removals of varying extents (some minor, others more blatant) that, sadly, do remove some of the subtle character development seen in Volumes 7 & 8, which I'll get to next. Technically, the anime does stop right at the end of Volume 8, but those last two episodes in particular do adapt in more of a technical sense, i.e. stuff from the manga do happen in them, but the context around & within those bits of adaptation is definitely not the same.

All of the fan translations, & even Wikipedia, use "Taylor/Tailor"
 instead of "Teil", but the katakana is "テイル/Teiru", not "テイラー/Teiraa".

These last two volumes that I'm covering, 7 & 8, are notable in how they change up some of the status quo, namely in regards to character interactions. Due to the explosion the gang are split up, so we have Rumina, Chelsea, & Korin as one group, while Ginnosuke, Emilia, & Jilherts are another, before each of them find their own extra party members so that they can both enter a tournament, one where the winner allegedly can have any wish granted by the "Boss of the Slums"; Volume 7 sets things up, while Volume 8 details the tournament itself. Namely, Rumina & Co. are later joined by "04" (as in "Rei-Yon", while Geneon used "Rayon"), a result of the scientists' attempt to create "hybrid-beasts" by fusing human DNA with animals, alongside Sharma & Ciel, while Ginnosuke & Co. gain Sui & Rou (the latter in disguise). All the meanwhile we get some nice little bits of character development, like Rumina & Chelsea starting to develop more of a relationship between each other (possibly romantic, but at the very least more caring & respectful), Korin & 04 bond over a shared need for The Company (Korin wants to be an A-Class Supei, while 04 thinks their research can prevent an early death due to her hybrid-beast DNA), Rumina instantly accepts Ciel as a friend when he learns that she tried to escape with Ruri, & Sharma slowly cools on her anger towards Chelsea. It's a nice way of gathering together who are essentially the main cast of the manga & allowing them to develop, while not putting the overall plot to a complete hold.

As for what the "they're technically in the anime, but not exactly accurate" bits of story, we have Rumina & Ginnosuke's teams finally reuniting during the tournament right before Kashin brings everything to a sudden stop when he detonates bombs in an attempt to destroy the Slums. Most notably, though, are some new character bits, namely that Sui & Chelsea have known each other from the past... and that Chelsea is actually one of the original five who founded The Company itself, alongside Kashin (who was a much more idealistic person back then), Seki, Teil, & Suijen; obviously, Chelsea knows way more than she lets on to Rumina & the others. In comparison, Pairon is a relatively new member, making him all the more suspect, especially in the eyes of Seki & Suijen. Naturally, since this is only the start of the second half, there's way more to The Company (& Kashin himself) than what we see in these first eight volumes. As for what the anime doesn't feature at all, the big one is Teil returning to the story with the start of Volume 9 when he finds Rumina following the aftermath of Kashin's ploy (which, like the explosion in Volume 6, is initially skipped over, obviously to be explained later via flashbacks). The end of Volume 8 also briefly sets up a new character, Brad (who the fan translation calls "Jerry Nicholas", if that tells you anything about the quality of it at points), who obviously will play a role later on. Finally, Volume 8 also includes Blade, a 31-page wild west/sci-fi one-shot that has nothing to do with Tokyo Underground & was never fan translated.

That just leaves the artwork, which is definitely a case of seeing someone grow in talent over time. At the start of the manga, Akinobu Uraku is by no means bad, his art's actually rather solid, but you still tell that he's someone who's only just started; he was literally 20 when Tokyo Underground debuted. With each volume, though, his art improves more & more incrementally, and since each chapter came out monthly the evolution can sometimes feel more pronounced at points, since volumes only came out twice every year in Japan. So by the time we reach the end of where this Demo Disc covers, which would be around late 2001/early 2002, Uraku would have been doing the manga for roughly four whole years, the same length of time many successful weekly manga that would run for at least 20 volumes would likely be ending. In short, Uraku's artwork simply becomes better as the manga goes on, and while the general style doesn't change much it definitely become much more refined by the point where I had to stop. This is especially seen with the volume covers, as the first seven volumes all feature a rather consistent look to them, with only a subtle improvement as you go on, only for Volume 8's cover to suddenly change to a much more refined look, and a glance at the covers for the remaining six volumes just enforces that refinement all the more so; I mean, just compare Volume 1's cover to Volume 14's & you can definitely see how much Uraku improved.

So, to go back to what I brought up in the very beginning of this Volume of Demo Disc, do the first eight volumes of Tokyo Underground establish the manga as being worthy of its place in the history of Monthly Shonen Gangan, and does it deserve to be up there with the likes of Violinist of Hameln, Fullmetal Alchemist, & Soul Eater, titles that ran alongside it throughout its seven-year run? In regards to the first question about it earning its place in Gangan history, I'd say that it does, though it's definitely a series that you have to stick with before it truly finds its groove, even in this first half. As we've established already, Akinobu Uraku is a mangaka who certainly had talent from the start, but his potential was something that needed time to be realized. Considering what's happened with him since finishing Tokyo Underground, it seems that the grind of being a mangaka was likely just too much for him to continue with, even when given a much more relaxed schedule with his second series, which is totally understandable. However, since the anime winds up adapting more or less the same amount of stuff that the fan translation of the manga covers, minus literally a handful of chapters that go beyond, I would honestly recommend just watching the anime if you are curious about it. While the limited animation may get on some people's nerves, the writing team led by Katsuyuki Sumisawa does an overall great job adapting the manga, minus those bits excised from Volumes 7 & 8 in the last few episodes; also, the anime-only finale can be a bit abstruse, & more symbolic, than anything literal. However, the anime does arguably improve on the writing a little bit with some minor changes to the order of some events for better flow, as well as some small little additions to help give scenes & characters that extra bit of at-the-moment detail that Uraku himself admittedly kind of glosses over (or just for some extra comedy). For example, Ciel is now seen crawling through ducts to find out info for Ruri, which helps establish why she'd be more willing to try to escape with her (i.e. she's already a rule breaker), where in the manga she just kind of finds things out by happenstance. The anime also has an outstanding pair of OP themes by [iksí:d] (pronounced "Ixceed"), both of which have excellent OP sequences directed by experienced animator Yuji Moriyama, who also handled the character designs.

In regard to the second question about whether it can stand with the likes of Gangan's most legendary manga, I naturally can't properly answer that question, since there's another 37 chapters out there to tell the rest of the story. That being said, though, I'd still say that while Tokyo Underground likely won't go down as one of Gangan's all-time greatest manga in its 32-year (& counting) history, it is still more than worthy of being a second-tier classic; not everything has to be "the best" to be a classic, after all. Also, since I do feel that Uraku's skills as both an artist & writer improve with each volume I read here, I honestly would still love to one day read the remaining six volumes of Tokyo Underground & see where he took things, since the revelations from those chapters that went beyond what the anime covered do have lots of potential to them, story-wise. Sadly, though, I highly doubt that Square-Enix Manga & Books will ever have any interest in translating & releasing Tokyo Underground in English, and since there isn't even a digital version of either of Uraku's manga for sale in Japan (plus his seeming disappearance, in general), who knows if it even could get licensed now, to start with.

Are other manga magazines less strict than something like Shonen Jump? Sure, probably, but sometimes it does allow a mangaka to be given the time for their potential to be properly reached, instead of hoping that it's seen instantly, and Akinobu Uraku is a fine example of that.

Manga © Akinobu Uraku