Superhero manga Golden Man is, arguably, of particular interest at this very moment, because as this series is just now becoming available in English, in Japan the manga is finishing this month – so if you do speak Japanese, you might want to avoid spoilers before you get the chance to read it from the start.
The titular Golden Man is the local superhero protecting the city of Neo York (which is more similar to New York than York, England), a man whose real name is Moroboshi and who wears a golden Iron Man-like suit when on duty, with an LED display helmet. When out saving people from a burning building, Golden Man suddenly disappears. The only person left at the scene is a guy with amnesia, who happens to have great strength.
Fearful of what might happen should the news of Golden Man’s disappearance be made public, the hero’s support team tell the amnesiac that he is Moroboshi and that it is he who needs to protect Neo York. He decides to work alongside them, unaware of the deception, while the support team try to figure out the real Moroboshi’s whereabouts, and if the amnesiac is to be trusted.
This “Moroboshi” soon finds himself facing off against various supervillains wishing to harm Neo York. In this first volume we see him fighting against Dr Centipede (basically Dr Octopus, but he loves Golden Man to the point of obsession), speedy ice villain Salchow, and he casually bumps into supposedly the strongest villain in the world, Oiran Trooper, a woman with a sword capable of cutting through space.
Currently, the best element of this manga is the story by Petos (Interviews with Monster Girls). The intrigue as to what happened to the real Golden Man and if the amnesiac is someone who could possibly be a villain but unaware of it makes for an entertaining plot. There is also a nice romantic subplot which appears to be developing between the amnesiac and the support team’s mechanic, a woman named Blues. The fight sequences are where the artist Kouji Megumi gets to shine, but personally I prefer the writing to the artwork so far.
As for the production of the manga, the translation from Andrew Hodgson for Yen Press seems perfectly fine, and Viet Phyong Vu’s lettering uses a nice mixture of fonts to highlight different moments. The work of editors Ren Leon and Carl Li as well as designer Peggie Liew appears to be decent enough. However, there is a disappointing lack of extra material in this volume. Aside from a two-page preview of the next volume, there are no extras at all. There isn’t even a table of contents, which is arguably just as well because I didn’t come across a single page number. However, these are mainly minor quibbles.
So far, it is a decent enough first volume, and I am interested in reading the second, mainly to see how much we can get to understand the central characters in the story. Hopefully, the fact that Golden Man recently concluded does not mean it was a planned longer-run that got axed before it could reach its prime.
Read a free preview on the publisher’s websitehere.
Our review copy was provided by the publisher Yen Press.
Ian Wolf
Ian works as an anime and manga critic for Anime UK News, and was also the manga critic for MyM Magazine. His debut book, CLAMPdown, about the manga collective CLAMP, is available now. Outside of anime, he is data specialist for the British Comedy Guide, is QI’s most pedantic viewer, has written questions for both The Wall and Richard Osman’s House of Games, and has been a contestant on Mastermind.
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