Black Magic

Black Magic by Masamune Shirow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A bioroid sorceress named Typhon is caught in the middle of a conflict between an AI called Nemesis and its creations.

I dug Appleseed when I was younger and this was part of the Masamune Shirow bundle that I bought along with the four Appleseed volumes on eBay.

Black Magic seems to be a retelling of the fall of the titans, featuring AI supercomputers and bioroids in lieu of titans and gods somewhere in humanity's distant past. Typhon, a bioroid created by Nemesis, goes to war against Zeus for humanity's future.

In a lot of ways, this feels like a trial run for things Masamune Shirow would tackle again later in Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell. There are cyborgs, AIs, and bioroids battling for humanity's destiny. The art is a little primitive compared to his later work but I found the story a lot easier to follow than Appleseed. Another thing Black Magic has going for it is that the ending is an ending, not just the story being dropped.

There are a lot of nice touches in the story, like the ice age being caused by Zeus' followers blowing up an artificial sun on the moon and the bulk of the story happening on Venus. There are some humorous moments and the action scenes were great.

The character and mech designs were interesting. I guess my only real gripe is that Typhon didn't do a hell of a lot beyond one or two action scenes and influencing things behind the curtain.

While it didn't bowl me over like I was hoping, Black Magic was a very worthwhile look at the early days of one of manga's masters. Three out of five stars.



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