Variante
Encyclopedia
is a Japan
ese horror
manga
by Ikura Sugimoto (the pen-name of Mao Kuon). The manga is divided into four volumes, each one having a cliffhanger that leads to the events in the next volume.
, but when a monster appears before her in her room, she regains her memories and her arm changes into a powerful weapon, very similar to that of the monster, before she destroys him.
As soon as she realizes what has happened, she only thinks to die and reach her parents, but something inside her still wants to live. She learns that the monsters are called Chimaira, and that her arm is made of the very same substance as the monsters (a Chimaira arm). People from the secret organization Atheos ask her to fight the Chimaira for them.
Unable to cope with this, she runs away to her best friend, Takashima Sachiyo, but terrorizes the latter when her arm kills Sachiyo's dog (on its own initiative). Initially, Sachiyo runs away, only to find Sudo, who informs her of Aiko's conditions. Sachiyo returns to find Aiko and the two share a moment together shortly before Sachiyo is killed by a Chimaira, and Aiko can do nothing more than to avenge her. Aiko initially refuses to fight, rather becoming a guinea pig
for Atheos, but with Sudo's help, she understands how much she wants to live and joins Atheos in order to find a place where she belongs.
After joining Atheos, Aiko helps battle the Chimairas, fighting her third one down in a subway, where she shows first signs of being psychologically unstable and had thought herself to have eaten it before Sudo comes to rescue her. Sudo reassures her that she hadn't. After that battle, Aiko asks Kochigawa why Sudo is not afraid of her. Kochigawa relays the question to Sudo, who answers that he was indeed afraid of her.
Sudo remains as the closest person to Aiko, actively taking part in her missions and supporting her. He is alerted by a mysterious person of the existence of a girl named Nana, to whom Sudo reacts with shock. It is revealed that Nana was a girl Sudo had found sitting before his house and had taken her in, only to discover that she was a Chimaira and had killed her. But because of his awareness, he is hired by Atheos at a young age and his sickly mother is kept in Atheos's hospital, serving also as a bargaining chip to keep him in Atheos. Sudo leaves to find the present Nana in Code045, an experimental facility in a rundown hospital in the mountains. On the other side, Aiko is sent there on orders to kill a Chimaira, feeling uneasy without Sudo's presence. They find Sudo held by the Chimaira, Nana, she attacks them. Sudo asks Aiko to destroy the two together, as to kill Nana would hurt him and to leave Nana would mean in his being devoured, but she pulls him out of Nana, telling him to live. Nana is killed in this action and Sudo is fired from the case for his actions and is put on house arrest. Aiko in another mission realizes that Chimairas are human and finds herself losing her fighting will, not wanting to become a monster. She is terrified although her arm kills the Chimaira against her will. Aiko falls into a vegetable-like state, hiding within herself, to the frustration of Atheos.
Sudo realizes that he is followed by men sent by Atheos but a van stops him in his tracks and he is kidnapped. He finds himself kidnapped by the same man who had informed him of Nana's existence, Yujiro Sera. Sera reveals that Chimaira were results from experiments to find an antibody that would be impervious to all kinds of diseases. The bodies rejecting the antibody became violently twisted, resulting in their monstrous forms. Chimairas had escaped, therefore Atheos's current aim is to recover them all. Sera also reveals that Nana had been captured after her "death" for breeding. Atheos planned to improve upon the current Chimairas to transform them into weapons. Sera plans to expose Atheos to the public, and upon Sudo's request for reason, claims that they had stolen "something precious" from him. Sudo realizes that Aiko may become subject to the same fate of Nana and makes a deal with Sera, that he will cooperate with Sera's plan, but wants Sera's help in rescuing Aiko.
The Executive Board of Atheos desires to take Aiko for purely researching intentions and frames Director Okuda as the one responsible of all the attacks on public property (actually by Chimaira). Aiko is revealed to be the child of one of the previous generation of test subjects; her father had fled the facility and transformed into a Chimaira, unknowingly killed her human mother. His body returned to normal and after Aiko's adoption into the Hosho family, desired to wish her a happy birthday. However he'd lost control and killed the family. His left arm that had torn off merged with Aiko, reviving her. Aiko feels a sense of comfort, realizing her father's left arm had been protecting her all along. Meanwhile, Sera and Sudo put their plan into action and sneak into the facility where Aiko is located. They find her in a room with Chimaira samples and her body on an altar. Sera tells Sudo to take Aiko while he stays behind to gather data, but is interrupted by an armed Kochigawa who tells Sudo to wake Aiko from her current state. She finds herself too at gunpoint by Sera, who reveals his true identity as Yuji Oumi, an ex-member of Atheos's intelligence division. Sera intends to shoot Kochigawa to save her from her sins but is interrupted by armed forces and Director Okuda, who tells Sudo to wake Aiko. He had realized that Aiko cares for Sudo and tortures Sudo before her eyes, but she does not respond until Director Okuda informs Sudo of his mother's passing away and Sudo cries out in shock.
Okuda reveals his intentions to use Aiko to give birth to a Goddess who will renew the human race. His hate for the current human race was spurned by his father, who was a scientist in war; enemy soldiers had broken into Okuda's home and killed his mother before his eyes. His father gave up his part as a war scientist and began to research an antibody, which resulted in the creation of Chimairas. Sudo criticizes Okuda's sceme and Okuda shoots him, but the bullet is intercepted by Aiko's Chimaira hand shortly before she tells Okuda that she will kill him if he proceeds to steal anything precious from her, referring to Sudo. The Executive Board sends in an army at this moment to destroy Okuda's plans and Sudo and Aiko take this chance to escape. An explosion takes place and Sudo's chief saves Sudo and Aiko from falling before explaining to Sudo that his mother had not been murdered but had died from her disease. They proceed to escape together towards the surface. Kochigawa and Sera on the other hand remain in the room where Kochigawa reveals the Goddess to be her sickly mother whom Okuda had given Chimaira treatment, and Okuda to be her father who had killed her mother, though planning to resurrect her. The first human Okuda hated had been his father, and she tells him ironically, that the first human she hated was her own father too and proceeds to shoot him. She traps herself in the room, telling Sera that she'd set the facility to self-destruct and that she plans to stay with her dead father who couldn't bear to be alone.
Sudo, Aiko, and the Chief escape to the surface but encounter Chimaira soldiers who shoot at Aiko. However, Sudo takes the blows and dies in Aiko's arms, shortly before he tries to kiss her. Aiko loses her senses and kill the soldiers as the Chief holds Sudo's dead body, watching. The building self-destructs as Kochigawa claimed and Aiko loses consciousness. She wakes up alone, having lost her left arm and both legs. The story ends with the public informed of Atheos's actions and Aiko in a heavily populated area. Her name is called and she turns around with a smile.
Sudo Hiromi
Kochigawa
Director Okuda
Chimaira
's online appendix to Manga The Complete Guide, he regards the protagonist's "emo and paralyzed by doubt" nature as being due to the influence of Neon Genesis Evangelion
on manga and anime.
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
by Ikura Sugimoto (the pen-name of Mao Kuon). The manga is divided into four volumes, each one having a cliffhanger that leads to the events in the next volume.
Story
Hosho Aiko should be dead. To be precise, when she came back home that day she found that her entire family had been slaughtered by a monster. The creature attacked her too, so she was dead, but she finds herself awakening in a mysterious room, taken care of by Dr. Kochigawa. She has amnesiaAmnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
, but when a monster appears before her in her room, she regains her memories and her arm changes into a powerful weapon, very similar to that of the monster, before she destroys him.
As soon as she realizes what has happened, she only thinks to die and reach her parents, but something inside her still wants to live. She learns that the monsters are called Chimaira, and that her arm is made of the very same substance as the monsters (a Chimaira arm). People from the secret organization Atheos ask her to fight the Chimaira for them.
Unable to cope with this, she runs away to her best friend, Takashima Sachiyo, but terrorizes the latter when her arm kills Sachiyo's dog (on its own initiative). Initially, Sachiyo runs away, only to find Sudo, who informs her of Aiko's conditions. Sachiyo returns to find Aiko and the two share a moment together shortly before Sachiyo is killed by a Chimaira, and Aiko can do nothing more than to avenge her. Aiko initially refuses to fight, rather becoming a guinea pig
Guinea pig
The guinea pig , also called the cavy, is a species of rodent belonging to the family Caviidae and the genus Cavia. Despite their common name, these animals are not in the pig family, nor are they from Guinea...
for Atheos, but with Sudo's help, she understands how much she wants to live and joins Atheos in order to find a place where she belongs.
After joining Atheos, Aiko helps battle the Chimairas, fighting her third one down in a subway, where she shows first signs of being psychologically unstable and had thought herself to have eaten it before Sudo comes to rescue her. Sudo reassures her that she hadn't. After that battle, Aiko asks Kochigawa why Sudo is not afraid of her. Kochigawa relays the question to Sudo, who answers that he was indeed afraid of her.
Sudo remains as the closest person to Aiko, actively taking part in her missions and supporting her. He is alerted by a mysterious person of the existence of a girl named Nana, to whom Sudo reacts with shock. It is revealed that Nana was a girl Sudo had found sitting before his house and had taken her in, only to discover that she was a Chimaira and had killed her. But because of his awareness, he is hired by Atheos at a young age and his sickly mother is kept in Atheos's hospital, serving also as a bargaining chip to keep him in Atheos. Sudo leaves to find the present Nana in Code045, an experimental facility in a rundown hospital in the mountains. On the other side, Aiko is sent there on orders to kill a Chimaira, feeling uneasy without Sudo's presence. They find Sudo held by the Chimaira, Nana, she attacks them. Sudo asks Aiko to destroy the two together, as to kill Nana would hurt him and to leave Nana would mean in his being devoured, but she pulls him out of Nana, telling him to live. Nana is killed in this action and Sudo is fired from the case for his actions and is put on house arrest. Aiko in another mission realizes that Chimairas are human and finds herself losing her fighting will, not wanting to become a monster. She is terrified although her arm kills the Chimaira against her will. Aiko falls into a vegetable-like state, hiding within herself, to the frustration of Atheos.
Sudo realizes that he is followed by men sent by Atheos but a van stops him in his tracks and he is kidnapped. He finds himself kidnapped by the same man who had informed him of Nana's existence, Yujiro Sera. Sera reveals that Chimaira were results from experiments to find an antibody that would be impervious to all kinds of diseases. The bodies rejecting the antibody became violently twisted, resulting in their monstrous forms. Chimairas had escaped, therefore Atheos's current aim is to recover them all. Sera also reveals that Nana had been captured after her "death" for breeding. Atheos planned to improve upon the current Chimairas to transform them into weapons. Sera plans to expose Atheos to the public, and upon Sudo's request for reason, claims that they had stolen "something precious" from him. Sudo realizes that Aiko may become subject to the same fate of Nana and makes a deal with Sera, that he will cooperate with Sera's plan, but wants Sera's help in rescuing Aiko.
The Executive Board of Atheos desires to take Aiko for purely researching intentions and frames Director Okuda as the one responsible of all the attacks on public property (actually by Chimaira). Aiko is revealed to be the child of one of the previous generation of test subjects; her father had fled the facility and transformed into a Chimaira, unknowingly killed her human mother. His body returned to normal and after Aiko's adoption into the Hosho family, desired to wish her a happy birthday. However he'd lost control and killed the family. His left arm that had torn off merged with Aiko, reviving her. Aiko feels a sense of comfort, realizing her father's left arm had been protecting her all along. Meanwhile, Sera and Sudo put their plan into action and sneak into the facility where Aiko is located. They find her in a room with Chimaira samples and her body on an altar. Sera tells Sudo to take Aiko while he stays behind to gather data, but is interrupted by an armed Kochigawa who tells Sudo to wake Aiko from her current state. She finds herself too at gunpoint by Sera, who reveals his true identity as Yuji Oumi, an ex-member of Atheos's intelligence division. Sera intends to shoot Kochigawa to save her from her sins but is interrupted by armed forces and Director Okuda, who tells Sudo to wake Aiko. He had realized that Aiko cares for Sudo and tortures Sudo before her eyes, but she does not respond until Director Okuda informs Sudo of his mother's passing away and Sudo cries out in shock.
Okuda reveals his intentions to use Aiko to give birth to a Goddess who will renew the human race. His hate for the current human race was spurned by his father, who was a scientist in war; enemy soldiers had broken into Okuda's home and killed his mother before his eyes. His father gave up his part as a war scientist and began to research an antibody, which resulted in the creation of Chimairas. Sudo criticizes Okuda's sceme and Okuda shoots him, but the bullet is intercepted by Aiko's Chimaira hand shortly before she tells Okuda that she will kill him if he proceeds to steal anything precious from her, referring to Sudo. The Executive Board sends in an army at this moment to destroy Okuda's plans and Sudo and Aiko take this chance to escape. An explosion takes place and Sudo's chief saves Sudo and Aiko from falling before explaining to Sudo that his mother had not been murdered but had died from her disease. They proceed to escape together towards the surface. Kochigawa and Sera on the other hand remain in the room where Kochigawa reveals the Goddess to be her sickly mother whom Okuda had given Chimaira treatment, and Okuda to be her father who had killed her mother, though planning to resurrect her. The first human Okuda hated had been his father, and she tells him ironically, that the first human she hated was her own father too and proceeds to shoot him. She traps herself in the room, telling Sera that she'd set the facility to self-destruct and that she plans to stay with her dead father who couldn't bear to be alone.
Sudo, Aiko, and the Chief escape to the surface but encounter Chimaira soldiers who shoot at Aiko. However, Sudo takes the blows and dies in Aiko's arms, shortly before he tries to kiss her. Aiko loses her senses and kill the soldiers as the Chief holds Sudo's dead body, watching. The building self-destructs as Kochigawa claimed and Aiko loses consciousness. She wakes up alone, having lost her left arm and both legs. The story ends with the public informed of Atheos's actions and Aiko in a heavily populated area. Her name is called and she turns around with a smile.
Characters
Hosho Aiko- The protagonist of the story, a 16 year old girl who is murdered but revives to find herself with a strange left arm. She initially wants to die and join her foster parents, but is convinced by Sudo to live and find a new place where she can belong. She constantly depends on Sudo for support during her missions and feels unsafe without him, as is implied during the mission to destroy Nana. Although she hated her left arm for being a Chimaira, she finds out in a dream later that her left arm belonged to her father, whom had been given Chimaira treatment. Feeling comforted, she emboldens her resolution to not become a monster and uses her arm only to protect what she feels is precious. Throughout the entire story, she maintains a close relationship with Sudo and it is heavily implied that they care for one another. She and Sudo betray the organization later and she lives through the self-destruction.
Sudo Hiromi
- A member of Atheos initially with a band around his head. He is not very deeply informed about Atheos's goal but proceeds to work there, as his mother is being treated at Atheos's hospital in return for his job. He has had previous experience with Chimairas, the first one he meets being Nana. Unaware of what she really is, she tells him that she is being chased and he vows to protect her, though he goes back on that promise when she awakens as a Chimaira and he shoots her. Deeply passionate in what he does, he supports Aiko from the moment he meets her, seeing a bit of resemblance to Nana. However this passionate support changes into protectiveness and finally to love. Sudo is always wanting to see her smile, making a promise with her just before his death. He is always there for her during her missions and finally there to block her from a rain of bullets. He seemingly attempts to kiss her before falling limp in her arms once more but appears again when she wakes up near death and ruffles her hair.
Kochigawa
- A member of Atheos and one of the masterminds behind the entire Atheos project. Aiko first encounters her in her Atheos room under her care. To Aiko, Kochigawa first appears as a cold hearted woman with only her goals in mind. Ruthlessly sending Aiko on life threatening missions, Kochigawa only analyzed Aiko based on convenience and usefulness. When Aiko became useless to the Atheos organization, Kochigawa turned her in to Director Okuda. It turns out much later that Kochigawa's mother was Director Okuda's wife and was administered Chimaira treatment. However when her mother evolved into one, she was killed by Okuda. Since then, Kochigawa has hated her father and desired to revive her mother, together with Okuda, thus using Aiko for that purpose. When her plan was realized by a close associate, Yuji Oumi, she ignored his pleas to flee with her, which resulted in Oumi's being killed, although this was later proved to be false. Having met Oumi again changed her perspective on things and she sided with the protagonists, killing her father and committing suicide, shutting herself in the self-destructing facility.
Director Okuda
- One of the Executive Board members and a mastermind behind the entire revival project. Okuda is often described as a heartless man, which is proven with his aggression towards Aiko when she becomes reclusive. He hates humans, the first human he ever hated being his father, as he blames him for the reason that his mother was killed. Okuda claims to only care for two people in the world, his mother and Kochigawa's mother, which was the reason for his obsessive desire to revive her. For this reason, Okuda is willing to use Aiko in order to revive her, but his plan is foiled by his own daughter who shoots him before committing suicide.
Chimaira
- Originally humans whom were administered Chimaira treatment. Director Okuda's father was the reason behind their existence, as his wife was killed for his having developed nuclear weapons, he became determined to create a foil of such, which were omnipotent antibodies. However his own plan failed when the tested human bodies rejected the antibodies in such violent manners that they became monster-like. Aiko first encounters one in her foster family's house, though she discovers much later that it was actually her father, who had fled a long time ago along with several others from the Atheos facility in an unexplained explosion.
Reception
In Jason ThompsonJason Thompson (writer)
Jason Thompson is a manga critic, journalist, writer and comics artist.-Life and career:...
's online appendix to Manga The Complete Guide, he regards the protagonist's "emo and paralyzed by doubt" nature as being due to the influence of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Neon Genesis Evangelion
, commonly referred to as Evangelion, is a commercially and critically successful Japanese anime series that began airing in October 1995. The series was highly influential, and launched the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. It garnered several major animation awards...
on manga and anime.
Further reading
- Gifford, Kevin. "Variante Vol. 1". Newtype USA. 6 (10) p. 103. October 2007. .
- "Variante, Vols. 1–4". Pop Culture Shock. September 7, 2008. Retrieved October 11, 2010.