Synopsis :
A pink-haired, teenaged punk girl named Bambi, who carries and uses a
pink gun, has kidnapped a boy as a favor to the “old men,” and now has
a bounty on her head. Bounty hunters, professional killers, and
underworld folk have been offered the equivalent of five million
dollars for the safe—and unscratched—return of the boy to his father.
Naturally this attracts all sorts of the wrong kind of attention to
Bambi, but she approaches that problem just like she approaches nearly
every other problem: with lethal force.
Review :
The world of Bambi
and Her Pink Gun is a grim, gritty, and heavily polluted land of
indeterminate setting and time frame. In it, Bambi
is the ultimate anti-hero: a dirty, profane, ill-mannered, amoral,
ruthless, and self-centered teenage girl who is a phenomenal shot with
her gun, can more than hold her own in any fight, and seems abnormally
strong. She always shoots to kill, and always does it without
hesitation or remorse, though one gets the sense that she does it more
out of annoyance (or necessity of survival) than because she gets any
pleasure out of it; people just get in her way, and that ticks her off.
What motivates her? She has a strong desire to complete this job for
the “old men” but no clue is given in this volume as to who they are or
why she feels such a powerful obligation. Her gluttonous “charge,” whom
Bambi
eventually names Pampi, doesn’t speak and seems blissfully unaware of
what’s going on around him most of the time, though at some points he
is amazingly perceptive about impending danger. Other recurring
characters include a young man who seeks to collect the bounty on Bambi
but opts to do it in a careful, deliberate way, and an Elvis-like pop
star named Gabba King, who virtually entrances young women with his
music. Other characters cycle in and out of the story on a regular
basis as they are killed off and replaced, the highlight among them
being a grade school teacher who commits skillful assassinations in
order to prevent his psychopathic urges from interfering with his
caring, nurturing side.
For the most part, the plot in this first volume is just a convenience
for setting up scenes of extreme graphic content. The circumstances for
why Bambi
is being hunted are set up, Bambi
moves closer to delivering Pampi to the “old men,” and Gabba King is
established as a prime player in the story—and that’s about it for plot
development in the more than 200 pages in this volume. Nothing is
explained about why Pampi is so important or about Bambi’s
background, and there’s little in the way of true character development
beyond Bambi’s
oddly childlike behavior, including her obsession with a children’s
program called Mr. Pei. What the story does have in abundance is
detailed, bloody action, nudity (especially in later chapters), and Bambi
firing off sophisticated lines like, “Me Bambi.
Gimme.” And “Are you tryin’ to put a stain in Bambi’s
beautiful, pure body?” Catchy, maybe, but unlikely to win any literary
awards.
The artistic style reminded me a lot of the kinds of strips
Mad Magazine used to produce back in the ‘70s and ‘80s—and no, I’m not
referring to Spy vs. Spy here. There is nothing distinctively Japanese
or mangaesque about it; this is something that could have been produced
by an American underground comic creator. Overall artistic emphasis is
on creating a grungy, unpleasant feel; this is a title which aims to
make an impression rather than look pretty. Character designs, while
not detailed or complex, are distinctive enough to do the job, and
generally unflattering. Foreground art is otherwise reasonably
well-detailed, but background art, when present at all, is not. Special
emphasis is always given to trauma inflicted upon the human body, so
expect lots of splattered blood and body parts.
The text in this volume is devoid of any notes, comments, narration, or
lengthy sections of dialogue. Digital Manga has taken a somewhat
unusual approach in handling the sound effects: where room allows, the
original Japanese effects are present but are accompanied by their
English equivalents done in the same print style. In places where space
is not sufficient for printing both, only the translated effects are
provided. This is, I feel, the most reasonable compromise between
making the title comprehensible and preserving its artistic integrity,
but those used to other styles may find it a bit clumsy. The original
right-to-left print format is retained.
With the July release of this volume from newcomer (to North America)
manga-ka Atsushi
Kaneko,
Digital Manga Publishing adds to the ranks of ultraviolent manga
released in the States. While hardly a sophisticated piece of work,
mature readers looking for an intensely graphic actioner to serve as a
light diversion should find this volume to be a satisfying read. It is
definitely not for the kiddies, however.