No, no excuses or promises. I’ve been both busy and lazy, and have not read much new manga. Phases like that happen. It’s really a sad state of affairs, because two days ago I walked into the comic section of a store and spent a lot of time staring at the manga shelves, trying to locate something that interests me. Oh, nothing. Is it me, or is it Germany’s saccharine manga market?
OK, what have I read? ‘Genkaku Picasso’, a manga running in Jump SQ. This one’s quite interesting and based on a very neat concept. Sadly, I find the execution a bit lacking, and considering that Usamaru Furuya has quite a bunch of manga onhis resumé (different genres and styles; can’t say he isn’t versatile and creative) there’s no reason to go easy on him. 
Hikari gets the nickname “Picasso” at school when he accidently misspells his name “Hikaso”, from which it’s just one tiny little squiggle to “Pikaso”. This fits insofar as he is constantly drawing on his sketchbook at school. He’s a loner and… honestly, rather rude and unlikable. One of the girls at school, Chiaki, befriends him practically against his will, through sheer persistence. But there is a freak accident, a helicopter crashes into them as they are sitting by a river, and Chiaki dies. Hikari survives, but he quickly learns that this was no lucky coincidence: rather, Chiaki made a deal so he could live: now she accompanies him in the form of a small shoulder-angel, invisible to anybody but him. Also, in order to stay alive, Hikari – Picasso – must save people.
After this accident, Picasso can see the auras of the people around him, and notices when someone has a deep-seated trauma that’s close to ruining or ending their life. He is able to draw a sketch that represents the person’s trauma, a surreal landscape that he and Chiaki can enter to figure out the person’s problem and solve a riddle to heal the trauma. That way, Picasso and Chiaki can save some of their classmates – and in a curious twist to any such manga, the people he saved do somehow figure out that they owe Picasso something, and become his friends.
I have a number of problems with this manga. I find the main character utterly unlikable. His pessimism and hostility towards anybody is really making it hard to care about him. The character design is a bit strange as well. At first glance, I thought Hikari was a girl: the author draws the lips and eyelashes very pronounced, giving everyone a feminine touch. But this is all minor, and maybe there’s a good explanation. Maybe Picasso has a mysterious trauma of his own and this will be revealed at the end of the story, as a final challenge. Maybe he’s really a girl.
Anyway, the biggest problem is that the manga cannot really live up to its potential. I find the idea of entering surreal worlds that represent a soul, in order to solve riddles, very enticing. Especially the first sketch is very cool and atmospheric, and has a bit of a scary feel to it. The solution to the riddle is not very challenging, but for a first chapter, that’s okay. However, the second chapter’s riddle and solution is not just banal, but downright ridiculous: a girl is growing weaker and weaker because she refuses to eat any vegetables, and the explanation is that the family had a bunny when she was a baby, and the bunny died from dehydration, but the baby believed that it died because it ate vegetables, and this is why all her life, the girl believed vegetables to be evil – subconsciously, without even remembering the bunny. Yeah, I got nothing.
With more complex and thought-out riddles to solve, as well as rescues that take more than one chapter, the manga could be fantastic. Maybe I am too pessimistic and it picks up after the first few chapters? But the problem seems very basic: the concept is great, but if the individual “cases” are badly executed, it really doesn’t matter. Once the novelty factor has run out, it’s the characters and their stories that must keep the story going. By the way, the artwork is cool despite my issues with the lips. I love that the scenes that take place within the paintings are actually drawn in a pencil sketch style, including the characters. I’d love more of that, of surreal drawings and adventures in a hidden world that obeys a strange logic… and now I’m off looking at Escher drawings.
Tags: genkaku picasso, usamaru furuya
