James Nicoll Reviews

Kei Urana’s Gachiakuta is an ongoing dark-fantasy manga series. It has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazinesince February 16, 2022. 

Known to some (but probably not those who live there) as Heaven, the town idealizes order. Possessions are treasured as long as they are pristine. Flawed objects are sequestered until they can be discarded into the Abyss. The town treats its ​“tribals” much the same way. Tribals are the descendants of criminals; they are segregated in slums, apart from the good people of the town, until such time as cause is found to throw a tribal or two into the Abyss. 

Rudo’s father was a murderer, cast down ages ago. Rudo is a notorious trash scavenger, an egregious refuse recycler. With the exception of his beloved stepfather Regto and potential love interest Chiwa, everyone in the slums expects Rudo to follow in his father’s footsteps. Blood will always tell. 

When Rudo is found standing over Regto’s body, covered in Regto’s blood, Rudo is immediately arrested.

The community does not believe in trials as such and Rudo swiftly finds himself dangling over the Abyss. When it becomes clear that even Chiwa believes he is guilty, Rudo barely has time to rant about the horrible revenge he will take on the town for their crimes against him before he is dropped off what is (as far as he knows) the edge of the world.

Rudo survives the fall. He awakes to find himself in a trash-covered wasteland whose very air is toxic. Pursued by bizarre trash monsters, Rudo survives thanks to the intervention of a masked figure who fights off the monsters and gives Rudo a filter mask. Rudo now finds himself totally dependent on the masked figure. 

Rudo’s savior is named Engine. Engine has plans for Rudo but first, Rudo must be forced to accept the reality of the situation. Not only is the city from which Rudo fell far out of reach, but having come from ​“Heaven” makes Rudo a pariah to a community that sees the city they mockingly dub Heaven as the source of all of the surface world’s problems. Most criminals dropped from above die on impact or soon after. A living person from Heaven is likely to suffer a terrible fate at the hands of the irate surface people. 

One near-death experience later and Rudo grudgingly understands that he is effectually Engine’s minion. He does have one advantage; he has a gift that makes him valuable to Engine. Rudo is a ​“Giver” with the power to transform the objects he touches into weapons. Givers are the only protection the surface people have against the trash monsters. Until such time as he can return to Heaven, Rudo must protect people who would murder him if they knew his origin.

~oOo~

It may be a metaphor for our current lives that this manga has rich people living in a pristine gated community while dumping their crap on the poors. I did wonder where Heaven gets its raw materials, being the sort of person who wonders about details like that. But this is only the start of the series. Perhaps raw material procurement will be a plot point farther down the line.

The governing principle of Heaven’s justice system appears to be ​“flimsy pretext.” Finding Rudo standing over a corpse is sufficient reason to hurl him into the Abyss. The slumdwellers strive to be perfectly law-abiding, despite which the townsfolk view them as irredeemably tainted. One has to wonder how long it will take for the proper citizens to tip all the slumdwellers off the side of the world.

However, in Heaven’s defense, screaming vows of bloody revenge may not have been the best way for Rudo to appeal his sentence. It may be that he just gave his judges even more reason to think that he was the sort of hothead who was prone to violent outbursts. 

Of course, the reader is given no reason to believe that being calm would have affected Rudo’s fate one way or the other. 

Kei Urana’s art is exaggerated and stylized, but well suits her lurid world. Otherwise … I read this manga because I’ve seen online raves for it, but it just didn’t click for me. The problem is Rudo, who, despite being an unjustly accused scapegoat, is quite unsympathetic. A hair-trigger temper, impulse control issues, and a disinterest in learning about the world in which he is trapped are not endearing qualities. This may be one of those manga where the supporting characters end up carrying the narrative. 

As far as I can tell, this manga is not yet available in North America.