K is a mech pilot for the Neo Seoul Police Force. He has been spending all his time as of late trying to arrest a group of terrorists, who seem to have fun at K’s expense. On another routine chase, K actually ends up fighting along and rescuing a Sara, a member of what he thought was a terrorist group. And before K knows it, he is branded as a bad apple of the police unit, and his life takes a dramatic turn. K finds out that there is actually a giant conspiracy behind how the whole world is controlled, and the group that he formerly though of as terrorists are actually freedom fighters that are fighting against a power-hungry group known as “Iron”. As Iron comes after K, his good friend Yura gets shot and becomes comatose, and K finds himself backup up to the wall with two options. Either fight with Athena, the group that he formally thought were terrorists, or go back out in the world and get killed by Iron.
Futuristic cops? Giant Mechs? Yes, please.
No matter how much education, social stratification, or cultural upbringing you may receive in life, there's still a part of each of us that likes
Die Hard movies. You know the ones. You pay your money, wear a big overcoat hoping nobody sees you, and you put your brain on hold for a couple hours and let yourself have a good time watching Bruce Willis do his thing against impossible odds. Hey, we've
all been there. No matter how much society tells us we need to better ourselves by reading Wolfe or Bellow, we still reach for the King or Crichton at the local Barnes and Noble. Sometimes we ask nothing more out of our media than to simply entertain us, and with that in mind, I give you
Phantom.
Lest you doubt the intentions of this review, I'll say it up front: Phantom is a very good book. It's a manhwa from Korean creators Ki-Hoon Lee and Seung-Yup Cho, and it's sure to entertain any fan of giant mecha stories. The plotline is pretty much ripped from any number of classic action movie scripts, but set in a futuristic time period. K is a cop who has to deal with budget constraints that won't let him fix his mecha, has a cute co-worker who might wind up being the love interest, and is tasked with the job of taking out a terrorist cell known as Athena. The only thing missing is the chief of police who yells at him constantly and…oh wait, he's there too. Okay, this book has everything the classic action movie script demands. Amid all the giant mecha battles, K discovers that he's endangering those who are close to him, and soon finds himself questioning where his true loyalties lie.
Now while Phantom is a very good book, it's not a really great book. There's not much here that's going to redefine anything that manga doesn't already offer you. K's every bit the stereotypical young kid with a fiery temper hiding a heart of gold. The mecha are huge and destroy whole buildings in their wake, but nobody seems to make much of a stink about it. And of course there's that wonderful double-standard that female surgeons work in slit mini-skirts and female mecha pilots don loose-fitting low-cut evening gowns to do battle. Just as you have to suspend your disbelief when you watch a good action movie, you have to do the same to enjoy Phantom. It's not a mortal sin or anything…you simply have to turn off that part of your brain that says "Oh come ON!"
Seung-Yup Cho has a very sloppy style, but I say that as a compliment. Every set of panels on a page runs the gamut from having clean, crisp linework to having very rough sketchy art, and the lack of a unified stylebecomes a unity in itself. The city is part urban wasteland, and the rawness of that comes out in Cho's variation from panel to panel. K in particular goes through a variety of emotions, each one getting a different treatment from the artist. It would be very difficult to pull this kind of thing off in Western comics, where we expect to see consistency across the board. Whether or not this is what Cho intended to do…it's quite possible he was just winging it and I'm reading too much into it…it definitely works for this book, and helps a fairly standard story kick it up a notch or two.
~IGN Review by A.E. Sparrow
I decided to try out
Phantom when I was reviewing my February comic book order list from my favorite online comic book shop. I checked out the description and it just sounded really good: Mechas, inner city fighting and lots of shooting. Hey, I watched a few watched a few of the first episodes of Robotech when I was a kid and all of my mecha viewing taste has to compare to that. Sight unseen, I decided to give it a try.
I’m happy to say that
Phantom was a good purchase. The story is set up fairly quickly and the protagonists all start off fulfilling their roles as expected: hot shot young man ignores the chick that likes him; hot mecha driver underestimates our hero, hero has to deal with obnoxious boss. But then the tables are turned as the bad guys are revealed to be freedom fighters, the good guys are not as powerful as you would expect and the real power brokers, called The Iron, are more dangerous and deadly than anyone expected.
The action is intense and the fights are well done. The city looks spectacular as the mechas fight among them. The art is believable and quite exquisite at times during the battles and in setting the environment. The story goes in some unexpected territory like kidnapping, snipers, terrorists, betrayal and emotional blackmail, so no complaints on my part about the story being sophisticated enough.
It’s the art that confuses me a times. At times I don’t understand what the art is trying to tell me. The art gets confusing and turns into a mess that I can’t simply identify which mecha is doing what to whom.
While the designs of the mechas are very impressive, in the fighting sequences it’s hard to tell if the “good guy” is the one beating the crap out of the bad guys. I can only assume so because the good guy is the last one that speaks in a field full of destroyed fighters.
Otherwise, it is a strong story with plenty of intrigue and plots that can go in many directions. It’s the unpredictability of the plot that is the strong point of this series, and I look forward to reading more
Phantom whenever Tokyopop decides to release further volumes.
~Manga Life review by Javier Lugo
i think what the art producer said at the end is wrong. first i don't see how each volume was a disappointment and second he probably had more readers than he thought. but other than that, the ending as really good.
MIZUCHI91
04.05.2008 04:39 PM