Origin

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Can't recommend this one enough. This manga is chock full of thrills, kills, awesome shit, and so much more. It's very funny, very beautiful, and overall such a fun read. Much like Boichi's other originals, the story isn't crazy, and is really the only thing that is not excellent to perfect about this joyride of a manga. However, if you aren't some snob who can sit and enjoy a simple, fun, wild story about robots and action and romance and guns and future shit, this is the pinnacle of binge reads. Give it a shot. I cannot stress how simply fucking sick this manga is

tl;dr: A manga with interesting concepts and well implemented sci-fi that falls apart horribly as it reaches its end.

This manga has a lot of interesting aspects that work quite well together. Firstly, the basic premise of a robot protagonist doing his best to blend in unnoticed with humans while having to deal with various problems that only robots have like charging and maintenance is incredibly interesting. The writing also does a good amount of showing the internal thoughts of the protagonist, which are very logical and contrast in a generally amusing manner from all the humans around him who are often quite emotional, but at ... the same time don't feel completely cold and seem to have some level of humanness to them. This results in some great comedy, but also allows for a lot of good character and relationship development. The highlight of this is the heroine Hirose, who is incredibly likable and has a decent amount of depth to her. The robot aspect in general also feels very well done with things feeling like they're being properly explained for the most part and it getting quite deep into the hard sci-fi aspects. This is especially prominent during the action scenes like robot battles where things often get incredibly complicated and heavy on tech, but still manage to flow well and be really exciting and interesting.

Unfortunately, all of these strengths only last for about two thirds of the manga. After that the blending in aspect gets dropped and in general the comedy disappears, leading to a much darker tone. The plot ends up going in directions that really doesn't treat any of its characters well. Some characters end up getting completely screwed over by the plot, in some cases in ways that feel completely unfair and unnecessary. Some characters that seemed likable have random heel turns which are equally annoying. And some just end up being way more lame than they should have been. The plot itself becomes overtly crazy. The harder sci-fi aspects are dropped and characters just start getting arbitrary supernatural powers. And while the ending does finish essentially all the important plot threads, it doesn't feel satisfying at all as it feels that it does this by throwing away pretty much everything it built up over the course of the manga. It also doesn't help that this entire last third happens in an extremely rushed manner that just makes everything so underwhelming.

If you've read another relatively popular manga by Boichi, Sunken Rock, it isn't that bad, but it's pretty close, and I think close enough to give me an impression that this guy while great at coming up with concepts for manga is terrible at ending them. Still, a strength that does remain consistent from beginning to end is the art, which is excellent with good designs and an elaborate art style for both characters and machinery with good range in terms of being able to convey action, horror, and comedy all pretty well.

"The first thing I saw when I was born was the snow gently falling from the sky."

Origin is the latest completed work by author & artist Boichi, a man who's stock in the anime and manga community seems to be rising with every single work done, and now with his role as artist on Dr. Stone, a popular manga in Shonen Jump, interest in him will only continue to grow in thanks to the currently airing adaptation of said work. But Dr. Stone isn't the focus of this review, instead this is about the story of one robot's arduous path towards self-realization.

And with this marking ... the last time a translated chapter for Origin will release, it's easy to look back on and think that it started off so hot with it's immediate eye-catching art and mature tone yet ended up barely hobbling over the finish line when everything was said and done.

Regardless, the first thing that's apparent in anything that Boichi has worked on is the quality of art present, and with this most recent work we see it at its best so far. With his previous manga there tended to be some attribute, whether it be the overall roughness in the character outlines and environments, or some heavy shading done to character designs that would end up taking away from the deep level of detailing that was otherwise present. There was always something distracting that stood out and the overall product suffered because of it, but with Origin these previous flaws were focused on and touched upon leaving us with a manga whose art at least, is as close to flawless as it's ever been. The photo-realistic art style is apparent for nearly the entirety of the story save for a few moments where we are shown a much more cartoonish and round art style that is more akin to his work done for Dr. Stone. But these aren’t used as a way to cop out, instead they’re meant specifically to dictate the tone of a scene and when you see the art style change you can tell it’s meant to be a lot more light-hearted, and comedic at times. Boichi enjoys including elements of comedy in his works and switching to his cartoonish style allows for him to not sacrifice the seriousness that his normal detail-rich style has, resulting in products that are almost always pleasing to look at throughout.

The only real negative that can be found is how he draws his females, of which they almost all resemble that of a supermodel with physique’s that are all drawn in a way to best show off either their legs, chest, or asses, not to mention all of them appearing to be moderately skinny and worst of all, all having faces that are almost identical to one another. This is something that is apparent in all of his works and while the female characters themselves are written competently, this design choice, and really the author’s preference in his females does get tiring to see all of the time. Somewhat ironically is that in Origin itself is the most variance in character designs even with the females and yet this “iconic” body type still makes an appearance in multiple females that are shown and featured.

As for the characters in Origin there is only one main character to speak of, as well as only one "main" side character. Beyond that there are a number of other side characters we are introduced to during Origin's journey, however most of their roles are so minuscule and lacking, such as the main villain, that there isn’t much to say beyond a line or two describing what they could have been. But hey the story is called Origin, and speaking of him it is revealed almost immediately, that he is an android, or robot. When we meet him we are presented with a cold, calculating machine that is focused solely on searching for something and as such, and to his backstory, we are presented with a blank slate in terms of a main character. What separates him from being a self-insert for the reader is the fact that his lack of any meaningful traits is a specific tool used by the author in order to use the environment of Tokyo that surrounds him to educate and influence his development as someone who is attempting to learn how to live. And it’s in this openness done by the author with this use of environmental storytelling that one of the main issues for this story starts to crop up. Beyond the other character of importance in this story no one else is really given a chance to shine and so it leaves the moments where our main character has those deep moments of realization feeling empty as you almost wonder where he pulls such prolific thoughts from, coupled with the frequency of said moments and it eventually leads into seeming more like Boichi is just trying to say whatever might seem cool and will work for the moment, which ends up cheapening a lot of the messages shared that would otherwise have more of an impact

But speaking of the other character, her name is Hirose Mai, a charming coworker of Origin's that we are introduced to not so long after the introductory arc concludes. She is an innocent, robot-loving woman who unfortunately, or rather fortunately, falls for our handsome main character almost instantaneously and thus you might imagine what her role is to this story. She is the perfect compliment to Origin's artificial personality and with a caring, nurturing attitude she is the standout character, offering a completely different look to his world, and thus opening his eyes towards the one thing he struggles to understand the most, love. And really she opens up the hearts of us readers too, with a cute character design that is complemented by her ditziness it’s almost impossible to resist feeling some sort of connection and sympathy while watching her deal with her own struggles and develop as a character, yet at the same time being the catalyst for all of the changes that our main character will go through. It almost seems as if this part of the story should have been focused on more, or in a sense less, because in comparison to the overall arching plot that is going on while Origin and Mai are interacting with each other, the story of those two is a much more touching and emotional tale than what we are actually given. So what do we get?

An android goes on a journey to find purpose in its existence, at first glance it’s a common synopsis heard before and yet thanks to the double-edged sword of Boichi’s writing, the journey itself is enthralling, being one half a delicate romp through the inner workings of our main character’s mind, and the other half a rapidly intense showing of no-holds barred fighting. The best part is that when these two are hitting the right notes at the same time it hits a perfect balance that doesn’t overshadow either and instead elevates the story towards the thought of something great...up until it isn’t. Due to either scheduling conflicts or Boichi wanting to focus solely on working on Dr. Stone, that perfect balance mentioned earlier is disregarded and the pacing of the story is thrown out of the window. This is a notable change as well that occurs through the middle of a well-paced arc that turns it into a sprint to the finish. Up until said point, arc's had been spaced out with about fifteen to twenty chapter allotted to each major arc which allowed for characters to be fleshed out and for the arc to end on a satisfying note, the writing is at its peak here and leads itself to being competent, rather than insulting for the reader. With new characters being introduced and utilized properly, fights featuring gorgeous choreography and panel work, the emotional weight that is felt behind Origin as he begins to take hold of what he wants. All of this happens and it hits the right beats and then for whatever reason, it’s thrown out of the window and instead all of that doesn’t matter anymore.

Overall, the art is still outstanding throughout but everything else is not, instead of caring for what will happen, you just want to see how Origin will end, no longer feeling invested in anyone but the main character as plot points and new characters are introduced and left behind, or even worse, waved off with some made-up and outlandish use of science and theory that feels out of place in a story that felt grounded in its universe up until a few chapters prior, this results in a piss-poor ending that has lost any emotional weight it had to it all you’re left with is wondering what could have been lingering long after the last page. That’s not to say the entire work should be ignored, it just sours the overall experience, akin to buying a new car and for it to work fine for a couple of months, only for the transmission to randomly fail one day so you go and look for a replacement of the same car only to realize that the entire line of cars has been recalled so all you’re left with is the bad memories of what happened at the end with it.