Yojimbot Volume 1: Metal Silence by Sylvain Repos and Noiry
There is something about this book I liked a lot. There wasn’t a new theme, but the way it was presented really captured me. We start “at the end” of things, or we don’t know why we are finding ourselves in a rundown, abandoned park that not-so-nice (to say the very least) military and/or government scientists inhabit. The artwork is clever, but I’ve seen it before, yet I really was into it. There is a lot of violence, vomit and death, but it mostly works to move the story along. There is a villain who I can’t wait to see him “get his” but in the meantime, I will turn on all the lights and pray like crazy that I have some cool robot friends to help me!
Like the friends the main character of the story has. What I am picking up is that things are about family, and how the powers that be use power to control. It is about how we make lies so believable they become truth. And when we find out that the truth is far different from what we are told, how we rebel. It is a classic idea and presented in a fairly classical comic format that makes it cozy as you watch the father being killed, the villain who I want to get theirs is flying his ship all hooked up to tubes and what nots, and robots make sacrifices that they probably were not programmed to do.
It is not an easy read, but it was a quick read. It did not take me very long to finish, but I know I missed things. The pages are busy and since the robots we are mostly dealing with are of a certain era of our story they all blend together. There are subtle differences but I probably should have had a score card. The images are colorful, but lean towards being dark. Shadows and light are used to set the mood. The colors are also mood setting as is the action. Everything is there to set the ball rolling. Ending on both a cliffhanger and part one is completed, I am not curious what is going to happen next.