Back to mtgowns's Profile mtgowns's Profile

Sanctuary is a tale of two friends, Hojo and Asami, looking to transform Japan, one taking the high road (politics) and the other, the low road (yakuza). The manga recommended to me as a rare political manga that's mature and intriguing. Unfortunately, it's nowhere as smart as it pretends to be and far viler than it presents itself as.

I'll start with the good: Sanctuary does an outstanding job of laying out power structures relevant to the protagonists' ascent to the summit and does a good job of exploring political dynamics with some nuance without being dull. Of course the notion that Japan's political and ... criminal titans would bend for young upstarts with a little Shonen magic behind them is absurd, but they get plenty of help from allies and motivated strangers alike who are affected by the events Hojo and Asami set in motion. Normally, these stories get warped by the need to portray the protagonists as singular driving forces behind change, but Sanctuary understands that it's a team effort with many layers needed to align before the dream can be fulfilled. Japanese anxieties at the time are also well explored, such as the permanence of the LDP as the party-of-power and the future of the Japanese military in a post-Cold War world. There's a strong frame for a fictional story about rising from the bottom to the top of Japanese society here. I really liked the art as well, it has a tropey 90's aesthetic to it but it's done tastefully and concisely. I rarely had to revisit panels to figure out what's going on, despite Sanctuary being a relatively dense story.

Sadly, there is too much bad in the story that forces my rating into the negative.

The proverbial rot within this manga comes from the way the author tries to communicate the underlying message of Sanctuary - that youth is being wasted on becoming robotic workers for the benefit of a few powerful old men, so young men must become ambitious and carve their own paths to change the status quo. Sounds fairly generic, but the problem starts quickly as the story presumes that such a feeling is anything but generic, and that Japanese people must be awakened from their slumber one way or the other.

One of the worst aspects of Sanctuary is the Yakuza being portrayed as the institution that steadily "wakes up" Japan. It sounds inane when it gets spelled out that way, but the mafioso are portrayed as the ones who hold the necessary energy and ambition to push forward the changes Hojo and Asami want to see in Japan. The reasons as to why it is that way is insultingly reductive: Yakuza soldiers are largely school dropouts and not so smart, so they don't overthink stuff and seize whatever is in front of them, through whatever means necessary, without fear. Sanctuary ends up with a cast of supporting Yakuza characters with Hojo at the helm espousing a childish don't-think-just-get-it-done enlightenment that's portrayed as the antidote to Japan's status quo, but in practice is as deep as the yells of a Shonen main character. In fact, every chapter one of these characters are yelling about how old folks should step aside, or how each man should fight on their own terms. Once the supporting cast is solidified, they even get increasingly implausible plot armor despite the occupational hazards of their profession and them commonly offing enemy gangsters.

This shonen-ism could maybe be endearing or comical, but it is actually played dead straight. Which leads to the next point being THE worst thing about Sanctuary: the story desperately wants to communicate a serious message, and wants characters who are virtuous, or at least portrayed as misunderstood by society, to do the evangelization and legitimize what the author wants the audience to take away. But it also wants the same characters to engage in Grand Theft Auto behavior without them having to deal with consequences, do any sort of self-reflection or even get in the way of the lofty goals they're trying to achieve.

The story features a loyal Hojo soldier who's renowned for his lack of inhibitions and the poster boy of the "so what if I don't think so good" philosophy advanced by this manga. Except this not-so-good thinker happens to be a serial rapist. And boy, do we see him rape a lot of women. I've seen some reviewers defend this particular point as "duh he's a bad guy", except that's not how he's portrayed. The entire point of Sanctuary is portraying "bad" Yakuzas as actually having the secret sauce to transform Japan without actually changing their personality. Interwoven between panels of women begging serial-rapist to stop raping them, we see him do speeches about loyalty, love and getting things done for the protagonists. He's also granted comical levels of plot armor, his survival not coming as some sort of comeuppance for his vile behavior, but because the protagonists willed that he keep surviving as one of the "good guys" helping their plan move along. The story takes an "aw shucks" approach to his villainy, being merely a side trait, an excuse for the manga to sprinkle in explicit sex scenes and occasionally, even trying to play the sheer terror of imminent rape for laughs. Once the story move along far enough, he simply decides he will rape no more, and that's the end of it. His boss, the man who spends the entire story lecturing people about the rot of the status quo and his utopic vision for Japan, never once raises Mr. Rapist's rape habit. The first depiction of rape is presumed to be him violently asserting his authority, but after that, when his subordinate status and deference to his boss becomes clear? Everyone simply assumes it's an immutable personality trait, including the very person whose preaching we're supposed to be taking seriously.

Aside from this one character, there are many other instances of rape and other types of shocking crimes perpetrated by the main cast. It's important to emphasize that the problem is not that the manga has portrayals of sexual violence or violent crime, but that the perpetrators simply aren't portrayed as any better or worse for it. Not for a single moment they have to deal with their vileness as either consequences, moral dilemmas or even character development for themselves. The manga is only concerned with how the characters stand in the world of politics or the Yakuza. It simply assumes that Hojo and Asami are moved by such virtue, that their motivations, the acts committed on their behalf or the behavior of their subordinates are inherently justified and need not be revisited. The "power corrupts" wisdom is completely amiss, which is mind-boggling for a serious political manga.

Sanctuary also must have some of the worst portrayal of women outside of hentai. There are very few instances where a women is on a chapter and she's not either being seduced, threatened or raped. There are maybe two instances in the entire story where women show any of the get-it-done attitude espoused by the story. Even the few powerful women who do show up are not just rendered powerless, but can't resist the urge to have sex as soon as they hear a speech about Japan waking up. The main romance also features sexual assault and is motivated by little else other than the aphrodisiac power of the manga's message. Seriously.

This review is already too long as is, but the one other big negative I have to mention is that are the political takes and policy prescription put forth, many of which show that the author either isn't aware of political systems in general, or just wants to be horribly reductive that they have to be laughed at. "The people must choose their leader!" - yeah, that's called a presidential system. "we must multiply the foreign worker population to motivate young people!" - the Japanese would be motivated by wage suppression to the benefit of the same old people the manga rallies against? Sanctuary has so many takes at that level that, again, it's just hard to take seriously.

Sanctuary has the skeleton of a good political and mafia story, but in its zeal to tell young men to shake things up, the manga quickly becomes contrived and pretend the bad guys can be good guys no matter the awful things they do.