So what happens when you tell the Japanese equivalent of George Orwell to write a superhero story?

I don't think its so hidden anymore that Japan is not a particularly happy place or a particularly fun country to be in relative to other countries, at least if you've been up with some contemporary sources. Inio Asano depicted the stifling loneliness, dirt and all encompassing mundanity of a progressive hierarchical Japanese society. The Gekiga movement struck out against the post-war depression and the annihilation of any moral center other than reckless hedonism. Of all the manga out there Sanctuary is probably the most likely precursor to Akumetsu, also being about individuals trying to break down a suffocating system of affairs.

Akumetsu is completely rooted in the workings and machinations of Japanese politics. Its American equivalent would be something like Taxi Driver mixed with The Avengers. It is relentless in its goal of damning every level of Japanese government, making use of a large array of sources and contemporary (at least at the time) Japanese woes and political dirt to sling at the faces of Diet members. It also has by far one of the most true and blue, and yet also the most interesting, invincible 'Mary-Sue' heroes of all time.

Of course everything I just mentioned above may cause a whole load of problems for any outsider of Japanese politics. To anyone who is not deeply entrenched in the affairs, Akumetsu seems like satirical adolescent masturbation. It seems like the purely self-absorbed power fantasy of a person who seems adamant to prevent any empathy from being projected onto the opposition at all. And the thing is that Akumetsu doesn't really laugh it off in a South Park sort of style but is really honestly concerned about all of the issues on the table. There is a parodistic hint but it never actually tries to go all the way to undermine the honesty of its content (even in the most craziest Sci-Fi moments). This means that Akumetsu is pretty much 162 chapters of pure unadulterated Japanese anger towards the state.

The whole idea of satire and caricature is to turn the world and its affairs grotesque, and in doing so maybe we'll be able to get a glimpse of truth through confronting the ridiculousness of things. Akumetsu does caricature, but in a move that is probably contrary to most Western satirical tactics, it drives itself in to take the hard moral stand. While plenty out there have the decency to laugh at the offender, they never step in to preach their own doctrine, because generally the satirist already knows that the world is too ridiculous to ever be condensed into any form of viable doctrine. Akumetsu is keen on showing us that all of the Villainy committed by the corrupted Diet members in Japan should be 'rightfully' punished with the highest penalty: Execution.

Because actually all the characters and the whole plot is merely a flimsy vehicle for this unmitigated rage. And there are even some serious logical leaps in the philosophy (the main one being the whole 'kamikaze Buddhist influenced assassination', which is completely undermined by the sci-fi premise that invalidates it altogether).

Yet, there is just something necessary about works like Akumetsu.

Because there really are political systems and hierarchies so stifling and governments with such rooted mindsets that they disallow for anything contrary. Because there really are moments when the individual, within such a system, feels like he cannot even move due to the crushing weight of everything all around him. Some societies, especially those based on Eastern Confucian style meritocracy, are rife with pent up repressed anger that has to be released somehow. This idea of freedom as the maneuverability of the soul, around the obstacles and pressures stifling the self, is the key idea of people like the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, or people like the Situationists and the Peace movement against Vietnam, and the writings or Orwell and Huxley, and the thousands of struggling artists and writers under the Wall in China. This is why the ones who truly understand freedom are those who've been through its shattering. When, even with discontent, a person can still flit freely within a society, he has no memory of the loss of flight. He cannot ever actualize the true gravity of the injustice against freedom.

Because the rattle of an AK-47 into the bodies of a couple of cartoonists in some newspaper company was not 'a valid reaction to a joke gone too far' but a great tragedy that was committed by people with such closed minds that they could not see another human being as anything but a living caricature of his own misplaced fantasies. And yet this Tragedy, no matter how many people claim to understand the gravity of the loss, could never be actualized to anyone who has not understood the severity of events such as the May 1968 riots or who have never had their voice taken away by so great a system before, and who have never felt the true gravity of being unable to speak, or even laugh, at a thing out of place.

Because whoever who hasn't known before, can never understand, no matter what.