Michael's Long Box: Caravan Kidd - A Review Redux

Thanks to a brief vacation to celebrate my birthday, I've been lax in my weekly comic posting. I know I've already written about Caravan Kidd here once, but that was last year and it was more reminiscing about what started my interest in manga as opposed to a full-fledged review. This story deserves far more attention than a simple essay like that.

It's time to take a closer look at Caravan Kidd to see if I can explain why its wacky blend of science fiction and comedy are still appealing after all these years, when some other manga doesn't hold up very long past its publication date. Did Johji Manabe bring to the table something special, or is Caravan Kidd's thirty-issue run really only good through the rose-tinted lenses of my childhood nostalgia?

Before we begin, be aware that unlike most of my reviews, there will be spoilers galore in here, but only in the second half of this write-up. Caravan Kidd is so enjoyable that I want to discuss everything, but I also want this write-up accessible to those who aren't familiar at all and may decide to jump in. I'll section off the major spoilers involving the over-arching plot points before I delve in, but I'm not going to mark each and every last minor one involving the stories confined to individual issues. The series has been available in English for more than twenty years--at some point the statute of limitations has to expire.

Ready? Let's get this caravan underway!

Introductions

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As the comic's opening text box reveals, Caravan Kidd takes place during a period of war. The Helgebard Empire, in three years, has conquered two thirds of the continent, demolishing borders and unleashing a flood of refugees across the remaining free cities and towns. The Imperials have no qualms using overwhelming force to demolish all obstacles. It's unclear why the Empire is hell-bent on taking over the planet, but so far they've been brutally effective at their job, and much like Al Pacino, they're just gettin' warmed up.

Source: GIFs.com

At the heart of Caravan Kidd are three primary characters: Wataru, Babo, and Mian Toris.

Wataru is a teenage boy, average in most respects. He ran away from home a few years back on the promise of adventure and excitement, but Helgebard's blitzkrieg through the northern-most territories saw him caught up with a most unlikely partner for survival: an Akogi named Babo.

Babo's an over-the-top stereotype of the "capitalism at any price" unscrupulous salesman (in the original manga, he speaks Kansai-ben, or Osaka dialect; the trope is often used to convey to readers that the speaker is boisterous and obnoxious, similarly to the way US writers use a heavy southern Texas/"hick" accent to indicate the speaker is less culturally refined). The Akogi are a race of squat, furry, bipedal gerbil-looking creatures who exist for the sole purpose of turning a profit. Babo's mantra is that everybody's a customer as long as they've got the money, and the consequences of his actions are irrelevant as long as he's raking in the cash. Heavy mark-ups on cigarettes and medical supplies are just the tip of the iceberg:

Babo's response in the manga is, "分からへん、分からへん。。。", like, "I got no clue what you mean."

And then there's Mian. She's the red-headed, fox-tailed, bikini-armored gal depicted on the cover up there. She's been waging a one-woman guerrilla war on Helgebard armed with nothing but quick reflexes and a sword for months, and while she isn't exactly winning the fight, she's certainly costing the army a fortune in ammunition, troops, and military gear. She first meets Wataru and Babo in Ekoda City, where she drives off a fleet of Imperial bombers single-handed, then press-gangs the pair into her employment via slave collars that contract and strangle the wearer if they disobey her orders. Alternately angry, brooding, and cheerful, Mian's unpredictable mood swings often start trouble when unnecessary, much to Wataru's consternation and Babo's delight--Mian raising a ruckus often gives him an opportunity to make some extra money, or sneak away from a scam in all the confusion.

The rag-tag trio have enormous bounties on their heads, making movement through populated areas dangerous (and occasionally tempting Babo with the promise of an instant fortune by turning in his companions), but the longer Mian journeys, the more people she meets, and the further the stories of her exploits against the Empire travel, the more she finds herself held up as a sort of savior to the people, a symbol of rebellion that inspires the ordinary folk to take a stand as well...even when things end in tragedy.

For all the humor and Mian's abilities as a certified badass warrior, Caravan Kidd isn't afraid to go to some dark places. And neither, it seems, is Helgebard.

At the head of Helgebard's power grab sits Empress Shion: an ice queen in the truest sense of the word. Powerful, blonde, beautiful, and as tolerant of failure as a certain black-armored villain from that other evil Empire you may be familiar with, Shion wields both her authority and her sword with chilling reserve.

I shit you not, her next line is, "Apology accepted, Commander Bardum."

Not content with leaving the task of capturing Mian to her soldiers, Shion journeys from her fortress on the hunt for Mian herself. When the two meet, the phrase 'super-chick smackdown' comes to mind. So does the term 'stalemate'. Shion and Mian are perfectly matched, each one the equal of the other, incapable of gaining the upper hand alone. Shion, of course, wields the might of her empire, and she's willing to raze the planet to the ground to put an end to Mian's heroics, but why is she obsessed with finding and capturing Mian at all costs?

Darkness Descends

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In the second issue of the comic, Wataru refers to the Imperial army as nothing more than a band of murders, rapists, and thieves. Over the next several chapters, we see just how true this is: towns are carpet-bombed, politicians are blackmailed, and no scheme is considered too dirty or under-handed in the Empire's attempts to capture or destroy Mian. On multiple occasions, Mian, Wataru, and Babo cross paths with people who barely survived an Imperial occupation, or survivors running minor rebellions using scavenged weapons and volunteers to harangue and annoy the army. Most significant in this camp is Khada, the eyepatch-wearing commander of an all-female group called "Grief" (because that's what they plan to give the Empire). Khada's fighters are used to playing dirty, but once the Empire's tired of playing with them, they hit back hard. Once Khada's band gets captured, the Imperial commander has this to say about the fate of the female captives:

Seems Helgebard runs their own Unit 731.

Manabe is careful to keep the tone light-hearted, the villains of a more mustache-twirling variety, but the undertones of sexual assault, slavery, medical experimentation, and more carried out on "subversive elements" are there in nearly every encounter. Much like the Nazis in an Indiana Jones flick, Helgebard's cruelty rarely receives an overt display--this is an action/sci-fi adventure series, not horror after all--but its undercurrent is unmistakable if you're willing to dig a little deeper. A later encounter with Khada sees Mian commenting on the scars decorating the other woman's back, a comment Khada brushes off by saying the Imperials like to play rough but so does she. Much like Clint Eastwood without a Y-chromosome, Khada's willing to take the occasional beating if it means living to fight another day.

But Manabe saves his darkest revelation for the end of the story, as things come full circle and the battle between Shion and Mian, the battle between the rebel army and the Imperial forces, draws ever closer. If you don't want an in-depth discussion of Caravan Kidd's over-arching plot, it's time to stop reading.

Here There Be Spoilers

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The question running through everyone's mind pretty much from issue one is clearly, "Who the hell is Mian Toris, and why is she trying to bring down the Empire?" With the introduction of Empress Shion a few issues later, a second important question arises: "Why is Shion so interested in Mian, and why is trying to take over the planet?"

Manabe takes his time, doling out info in dribs and drabs. Three issues in, Mian and Wataru have their first showdown with Commander Bardum aboard his battle cruiser, where Bardum berates Wataru for his lack of knowledge about the woman with whom he's traveling. "She's a Breaker, boy," Bardum raves, "a Breaker, understand?" The men under Bardum's command back up this assertion, telling Wataru that Mian intends to destroy not just the Empire, but the planet itself.

Wataru, of course, questions Mian, but she denies having any idea what the Imperial troops are talking about. Wataru never forgets though, and periodically he brings the topic up. This business of being called a "Breaker" drives her crazy, though she won't say why. It isn't until issue ten (the last chapter of the first of the three TPBs) that Wataru gets a few questions answered, first in a one-on-one chat with Empress Shion, and later with a revelation that shocks him (and likely the reader as well):

Mian looks like a flesh-and-blood creation, but she's actually a highly-advanced creation, a "fourth-generation Synthoid" as Shion puts it. "Pseudo-life. Almost human, but not quite."

Suddenly Mian's insane reflexes, calmness in the face of battle, and ability to destroy tanks with just a sword makes total sense: she's basically a Terminator clad in mobility-enhancing armor, with a built-in regenerative function. The injury she sustains in the above image is completely closed over a few pages later.

No wonder the Empire's consumed with her capture: she's powerful enough to literally wreck the whole planet.

She's also inciting insurrection on a national scale, but that's a different matter.

Of course, careful readers have already sussed out the other half of the equation there: if Shion is Mian's equal, and Mian is an android, then it stands to reason there's more to Shion than meets the eye. Though it isn't directly revealed until many chapters later, this is in fact precisely the case. Shion is also "pseudo-life", only with different parameters. Shion was programmed for governance, Mian was programmed for battle. In fact, Mian was programmed not just for war, but for a very specific war-like function: the termination of Shion.

"Programmed by whom?" you might wonder. We'll get to that in a bit. The point is, Mian's sole purpose in her pseudo-life is to destroy the Empress. In fact there wasn't just one Mian, but five built-in redundancies whom Shion managed to destroy prior to Mian's activation. "Breaker" in this case is similar to "circuit breaker". She's a switch tripped automatically when a governing synthoid such as Shion goes rogue and defies her primary programming. Shion's meant to bring order to the planet through the rule of law, not grind the world under her bootheels.

That's all well and good, but it's not as cut-and-dried as it may first seem with Shion = bad and Mian = good. The new question is, if all this Empire-building by Shion basically voided the Terms and Conditions of her service, an act which Shion knows would result in the activation of a Breaker to stop her, why would Shion go rogue and attempt to take over the world?

The answer is simple: Shion isn't actually in charge of anything. The governing consortium who programmed her to guide development on this small, insignificant, backwater planet is only interested in the planet's potential as a massive source of energy. Just as people line up to oppose the contamination of groundwater caused by hydraulic fracking, Shion has become aware of her own agency and risen up in opposition to this usage of her abilities. She's a slave to the system, a cog in an infinite machine which grinds planets up to feed its enormous energy requirements, and she wants nothing more than to throw off her shackles.

Shion desires what any of us, as individuals, want: the freedom to live how we choose instead of being subjugated to a wanton, careless, and morally-disinterested cabal of rulers. Unfortunately, in order to accomplish this, she has to be powerful enough to oppose that conglomerate when they come to check up on her progress. Building her Empire, expanding its reach, and creating her army is the only way she can see to get back at her faceless masters. The annoyance of a mosquito bite or the sting of a wasp won't do--she needs the ability to inflict metaphorical gunshot wounds to anyone who would come to harass her world. She violated her programming by becoming cognizant of her own self-worth as an individual, essentially evolving human-like traits and coming to understand what it means to be "real".

The irony of it all is that we, as the readers, have been rooting for Mian to win all along, only to discover the completion of Mian's mission means the eventual destruction of the planet. Mian herself wouldn't be the direct cause of this, and the world won't instantly come to an end, but if Shion's plan comes to fruition, she would break the cabal's hold over the planet and guarantee its safety, albeit under the iron-clad rule of herself and her Empire. Mian's success, on the other hand, would bring an end to the Helgebard Empire, but in doing so cement the planet as just another resource in the hands of an enormous, uncaring galactic governmental entity. Shion crushes rebellion and puts down insurrection not because she enjoys doing so (she's an android, so she doesn't really 'care' one way or the other), but because the fall of Helgebard means the unwitting loss of everything both she and the rebels are fighting for. In addition, Mian isn't fighting Shion out of a quest to stomp out evil or desire to set the world right--she's going after Shion because it's what she was designed and built to do. She has no choice in the matter. Her activation put them on a collision course from day one, but she was activated because Shion broke the handcuffs of her programmers, and she's unable to do the same.

Not so cut-and-dried anymore, is it? Who do you root for under those conditions? How can the story possibly conclude to everyone's satisfaction?

Sorry, not spoiling that one. Even I'm not that large of an asshole. What I can say is that the conclusion of Caravan Kidd brought closure to an emotional journey akin to following one's favorite television show over several seasons to its final episode. Manabe's secret is characters--by the mid-way point, we truly care what happens to these people, and feel as though they've been a part of our lives. Reading the series as it was published, forced to wait thirty days between new chapters, and re-reading back-issues while waiting for the next one to hit the new book rack at my local store, cemented my love for this story and these characters.

This is an experience far different than being able to read one's way through all three TPBs from start to finish, just as watching a television show one episode per week is a different experience from binge-watching an entire season, or multiple seasons, over the course of a few days. I honestly can't say one is better than the other, but I will say this is one series where I prefer reading the individual issues over the TPBs, if for no other reason than it forces you to slow down and ponder what you've just finished while you put away the issue you just read, and unbag the next one. You also get the enjoyment of the letter columns, fan art, and other goodies stripped from the collected books.

Caravan Kidd isn't my favorite manga ever (that crown still belongs to Outlanders, Manabe's earlier sci-fi space opera series), but the characters, plot twists, and hilarious dialog all cast against the backdrop of Manabe's unique and comical visual style are a match made in manga heaven.

Or your inner ten-year-old could just laugh at the fart jokes.

Your call.