Kurogane new Del Ray manga by Kei Toume

L

Laughing Manji

School Idol
Anyone read this? First volume is out now. I hadn't heard anything about this before.

But I like Kei Toume's work: Lament of the Lamb, and I am well curious about this.

Description: (taken from United Publications)
Avenging his father's murder was a matter of honor for the young samurai Jintetsu. But the man who killed his father was a corrupt official, and now the government is determined to hunt Jintetsu down. There's only one problem: he's already dead.

Torn to pieces by a pack of dogs, Jintetsu's ravaged body was found by Genkichi, outcast and master inventor. Genkichi gives him a new indestructible steel body - and a talking sword - just what he'll need to face down the gang that's terrorizing his hometown and the mobster who ordered his father's death.

But what about Otsuki, the beautiful girl he left behind? Steel armor is proof against any sword, but it can't save him from the pain in his heart.
 
I'm not sure about the story - it doesn't scream "buy me!" to me at least, but I can imagine Toume's art style doing it justice. Might be worth looking into actually - I'm a Lament of the Lamb fan too.
 
Found a review of it:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23724

Average review only, and quite critical of some aspects. Perhaps this is a title that will improve, but the reviewer was quite critical of the fight staging, and found it difficult to connect with or empathise with the protagonist.

Review reproduced in entirety from Aint it Cool News (I will edit this down to specific points if this is not kosher):
Readers will probably recognize similarities the protagonist of Kei Toume's (Lament of the Lamb) Kuro Gane shares with Blade of the Immortal's Manji and possibly with Osamu Tezuka's Dororo (which became the game Blood Will Tell). If there isn't an homage lineage connecting the three, and there may be, they are at least all in some way inspired by the one-eyed, one-armed pulp samurai hero Tange Sazen.
With a bandage rag cover one eye on his scarred (riveted plate) face, Kuro Gane 's(Black Steel) Jintetsu certainly invokes the Sazen type characters who have been hardened to a degree that catastrophic physical loss doesn't slow them. It's the sort of manifestation of will of body that is bound to be plentiful within stories that address the samurai's determination.

Jintetsu was a fierce young samurai who became a rogue assassin to avenge his family. On the run, Jintetsu had an unformatted encounter with a group of bounty hunters and their dogs, and on the verge of death, he was picked up by Genkichi, a mad genius who found inspiration by "western science". After harvesting various body parts from Jintetsu, Genkichi replaced most of the Jintetsu's damaged or missing pieces with mechanical replacements. Before finishing all aspects of the body, speech being one of the omitted functions, Genkichi drags Jintetsu into his own sorted affairs.

Toume mixes cartooning and classic artistry in the visual composition of Kuro Gane. The simplified, almost symbolic sketches of Jintetsu are mixed with expressionist yokai-spirit haunted depictions of his tormented soul and set against detail ink works capturing the details on clothing or objects, such as a painted barrel.

Despite the quality of the illustration, Kuro Gane is a flat read. Toume does not stage a fight or the lead up to a fight well. Though not a case where fights are substituted with quickly resolved placeholders, the progression of the meeting and engagement with the foes does not modulate with a flow of build up and pay off.
Toume apparently has ideas for how to utilize the character, offering a variety of attacks in the different fights, but movement of the figures in a fight and transition between panels does not to translate into fights that are easy to follow or exciting.

Feeding this problem, Jintetsu doesn't have the presence of popular manga sword-fighters. There's no moment where the veil of the samurai's composer is lifted to establish the force of Jintetsu's personality.
 
http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews2/mang ... _view=1751

AnimeOnDVD had a more positive review:
With Kurogne, Kei Toume attempts to add a unique stamp on the overcrowded samurai genre. I really enjoyed how the stories were more about the people and their loneliness in the world, rather than an action filled shounen type of story. The manga allows for some periods of introspection that were quite rewarding and gave some nice depth to the characters, even if they were only around for a couple chapters. Kei Toume knows how to tell touching stories, and I’m very much looking forward to how this one plays out.
 
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