The World is Mine / first chapter
The world is mine, Hideki Arai, 1997, pre-published in Young Sunday, Seinen, 14 volumes
TWIM follows a pair of criminals, Toshi and Mon, as they travel through Japan setting bombs to explode on their path. At the same time, a third force of destruction also wreaks havoc through Japan : a mysterious bear-like beast, dubbed Higumadon.
Having read TWIM twice now, I found it interesting to revisit the initially confusing first chapters after knowing the rest of the story. Here is an attempt at reviewing the manga through an analysis of the very first chapter. Spoiler free, except for said first chapter obviously.
Before digging in the chapter itself, let’s take a look at the first page greeting the reader when opening the book. The title, written in a brush calligraphy style, dynamic and angry, fits perfectly with the following content of the book. This type of calligraphy is recurring in Arai’s work, often used in the manga to depict screams and other noises, almost more part of the artwork than textual. This title page already sets the tone and style of the story. The words themselves, an assertion of power by an individual over the world itself, highlight the main themes of the manga perfectly.
BOMB
The title of first chapter, Bomb, is equally fitting, foreshadowing the explosive nature of the manga.
It can refers to literal bombs : the bombs made by Toshi in fire extinguishers, shown in the very first panel of the very first page, before anything else.
It is also a fitting title because the whole manga is like a bomb, explosive and violent, it is sure to shake the reader. Arai is known for his hot-blooded, frenetic, furious style. TWIM is polemical and powerful work, that I’m convinced only Arai could have made. To me no other manga come close to the experience of reading TWIM.
TWIM depicts the clashing of different destructive forces. The manga is characterized by build-up of power. If the first chapter is titled “Bomb”, the second chapter already escalates it to “Power Bomb”. Throughout the story, there is rising tension, eventually leading to annihilation. But after the spark, something can rebirth from the remains. This cycle of destruction leading to a blank state and finally the birth of something new, is central to the work.
Toshiya and Mon, a complex and compelling duo
The Toshi-Mon duo is introduced as soon as the very first pages.
Toshi is testing his self-made bombs on a beach, a camera in hand, perhaps to keep a trace of the power he feels he acquires through bombs.
He appears timid, hesitant, holding the camera with shaking hands and rambling about his weak spirit.
Toshi is a self admitted ordinary and weak person, yet, he is enthralled by the powerful Mon, whose irruption in Toshi’s life totally derailed it from its unremarkable path. Toshi has the skills to build bombs, but Mon is the detonator that allows him to actually put them to use. The two of them are opposite but fuel each other.
Toshi, as the technical brain of the duo, stands within a distance, whereas Mon’s very first appearance is within the explosion itself, highlighting his own explosive nature.
Next to the talkative Toshi, Mon hardly speaks, and often rather grunts and screams like an animal. The name “Mon”, immediately reminds of “Monkey” or “Monster”, though it gets another explanation later in the story.
Mon is like a wild beast, unpredictable, dirty and violent. Other scenes from the first chapter shows him having rough sex with a girl in a car Toshi drives, and violently beating a man in a high-class restaurant : Mon follows his urges, with no concerns about social conventions or morality.
He is primitive, unaffected by human rules, and does what he desires, takes what he wants, without remorse.
(gobbling up the crayfish whole, shell included.)
Right from the first chapter, the characters leave a strong impression, Arai is not afraid of exaggerating his character’s quirks, to depict the ugliness in people -both psychological and physical. He carefully draws his characters with different attitudes, gestures. Arai shows their personality and feelings through body language, the characters are rarely static but have tics, little movements in most panels.
Mon only utters one proper sentence in the chapter : "I will acknowledge myself": a recurring sentence, becoming increasingly important as the story progresses. It gives a hint on Mon’s psychology and motivations, yet those (and Toshi’s) are still mysterious at this point. Why are they setting bombs un the first place? How did Toshi and Mon meet and associate? What are they even trying to achieve ? The setting raises many questions that don’t get answered straight away. Their extremely violent behavior seems senseless, it feels even more cruel and hard to stomach without a reason behind it.
Toshi and Mon form an interesting and contrasting pair; the dynamic between them is complex.
Higumadon - nature vs human society
A third main character is introduced right from the first chapter : Higumadon.
The bear-like creature appears in front of fishermen by the sea, attacking their boat.
His apparitions are fragmented and mysterious : we either get an indistinct overall shape of the beast, or only isolated parts of him clearly depicted (just a paw, some fur..). He is compared to a bear, but his true nature is unknown.
His appearance is more suggested than shown clearly, his presence is shown through little pieces of his body, and by the marks and damage he leaves behind.
Abnormally huge, he too is powerful and destructive. He is seen again during a storm, part of a raging and violent nature.
There is already a parallel established between Higumadon and Mon. Both of them are associated with bears : Mon carries a plush bear with him everywhere, and that plush is used by Arai to transition from a scene focusing on Higumadon to a scene focusing on Toshi-Mon.
This comparison between Mon and Higumadon, both of them wild beasts, is further reinforced every time we switch scenes. When Higumadon leaves behind giant paw prints, Mon leaves footprints as well (with red wine, reminiscent of blood). When a cow is torn apart by higumadon’s paw, it is followed by a panel of a bomb in Mon’s hands.
These three could be placed on a spectrum from “civilized” to “wild animal”: Toshi who is into technology and had an ordinary human upbringing. Though he makes bombs to kill, he is reluctant to dirty his hands in more direct ways, without the distance created by long-distance weapons. He has the most awareness of doing something bad.
Mon, who seems halfway between a human and an animal. He has no problem killing and hurting others, just because he has the power to do so, the same way wild animals may kill and hunt. This makes him paradoxically both worse in his action and less morally reprehensible than Toshi.
Higumadon, who seems almost like he was sent against humans by a rebelling nature. He kills, but it’s nature as a beast/animal makes it so that you can’t resent him like a human criminal with actual bad intentions. He is just like a natural disaster that can’t be judged as morally bad.
Frenetic and dense in information
In TWIM, the mob characters are drawn with as much details as the main cast, they are often given little dialogues that don’t add to the story, but give a glimpse of who they might be, showing that even the background characters have their own lives, personnalities, for example the fishermen who first witness Higumadon in the first chapter.
This sometimes has the downside of making an already dense manga even more information and text heavy than it needs to be.
There are a lot of different characters, from all sort of backgrounds and ages. From the first chapter alone, we get children, fishermen, delinquents, a high school girl, rich customer of a fine dining restaurant... But all of them are shown as vulgar and crude.
Arai’s art might to not be to everyone’s taste, but it is good. His characters have realistic though often exaggerated features, his art is easily recognizable. The pages are dynamic, and he can create really powerful scenes and pages, some that stayed in my mind even long after I closed the book.
The art is detailed, sometimes it requires some attention to parse everything that is going on in some panels.
TWIM oscilliate between big action scenes, and scenes that are very wordy. Both are dense in information to take in.
Even starting from the first chapter, there is constant movement: Toshi and Mon are on some sort of road trip, moving from one place to another. Moreover, the narration jumps quickly from one scene to another, in this chapter alone we have change scene eight times.
Everytime, there are very precise indications on the place and date, sometimes down to the exact time. The places depicted are real, so it is possible to precisely trace the path of the protagonists.
The manga can be hard to follow at first, it is confusing, with a choppy narration, no clear direction... It seems like many people drop the manga in the beginning, which is a shame as they miss the best parts of TWIM.
The manga starts as incomprehensible, and then progressively pieces come together to form a meaningful story.
TWIM is a polarizing work, often hated or loved. Its violence can be off-putting to some readers, but those who go past the messy first few volumes are rewarded with a powerful manga like no other, and a lot to think about even after closing the book.