The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

The Darwin Incident

What's It About? 

The Animal Liberation Alliance, an eco-terrorist organization, rescues a pregnant chimpanzee from an animal testing lab—only for it to give birth to a half-human, half-chimpanzee “humanzee” named Charlie! Fifteen years later, Charlie's human foster parents are finally ready to send him to a normal high school, where he makes his first friend: a human girl named Lucy. In the meantime, however, the ALA's stance has become ever more extreme, and now they're here to drag Charlie into their terrorist plot...

Winner of the prestigious Manga Taisho, as well as an Excellence Award at the Japanese Media Arts Festival, The Darwin Incident is as action-packed as it is socially relevant!

The Darwin Incident manga has story and art by Shun Umezawa. The English translation is by Cat Anderson, with proofreading by Kevin Luo. Published by Vertical Comics (September 5, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

The Darwin Incident, or The Darwincident, as I like to call it, is a loaded story, and it wants readers to know it. Opening on a scene of unsympathetically clumsy and violent animal-rights terrorists wearing Guy Fawkes masks raiding an animal experimentation laboratory; it quickly and brashly starts delving into sociopolitical philosophical debates where its line between allegory and satire is hard to parse in just this initial volume. I will not pretend to know author Shu Umezawa's complete history and life experience and how personally familiar they are with the ultra-modern American cultural talking points utilized here. But they are clearly at least aware of and fascinated by this specific angle, with things like the bullying schoolkids of rural Missouri taunting central human/chimpanzee hybrid Charlie with such ripped-from-the-comments-section grievances as "Pandering to minorities" and "You can't even say 'Merry Christmas' anymore!"

It is pointedly a lot alongside all that radical terrorism stuff, which leads to the ever-present question while reading it. Which side, if any, The Darwin Incident will come down on? It incites the salient societal question of what you should do, if anything, when a group you technically belong to is vilified due to the actions of a minority batch of extremists. However, Charlie's seemingly detached ultra-intelligent processes leave him with little reaction apart from cold observation and wry reductionary remarks. He comes off as an avatar for the author to stand back and evaluate humanity. So whether the animal-rights group is a genuine example of extremism that can arise from devotion to such an overbearing tenet as veganism or if they're opportunistic murder-mongers in service to some broader societal agenda isn't clear. This is only the first volume of a bigger story, and the more sympathetic characters on Charlie's side seem to agree that "Of course, murdering people for not ascribing to your belief system is bad!"

Trying to analyze The Darwin Incident at this stage becomes a game of trying to parse its perspective. Is this a Japanese take-down of American-style activism politics? A satire of eco-terrorism? A story of marginalized existence apart from or unable to be separated from activism? All that and more and none of it? It makes it an interesting swirl to gaze into, even as many swaths of its pontificating are simulated whataboutisms, and others are pithy reductions. Whether this ends up compelling is too difficult to tell in this first volume over only a few paragraphs. Umezawa's art is outstanding, using subtly informative and uncannily creepy facial expressions and depicting a few intense outbursts of action. And the straight storyline stuff settles into a solid thriller in the second half of the volume after more of the denser sociological stuff is out of the way. The Darwin Incident is at least worth a look out of pure curiosity, absent an understanding of where it's going or how individual readers will react to how it attempts to get there.

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

The Darwin Incident is a story with all of the subtlety of a brick to the face. In our growing age of political commentary, where it feels like anybody can have the most insane opinion about anything, this isn't a bad thing. Sometimes, you need a story that screams its message in your face. Yes, that can get preachy and annoying, but The Darwin Incident succeeds because it offers its commentaries through a unique lens. The story follows the life of a teenage hybrid between a human scientist and a monkey. Charlie doesn't look human by any means, but he possesses a profound level of intelligence that makes him well beyond his peers. He has a very dry delivery and seemingly goes through the motions of everything straightforwardly. Still, because of that, you get the sense that he's one of the only characters in this world that doesn't buy into the bullshit of its propaganda and social peacocking.

The story focuses on animal humanitarians and views everything through the lines of meat eaters versus vegans. I know that is an ongoing discussion in the real world, but The Darwin Incident makes it seem like it is the main conflict that humanity is wrestling with. However, I'm sure you could swap out this commentary for other forms of oppression like sexism and racism. The idea is that people are people at the end of the day, and no one is necessarily predisposed to being superior to another. People put a lot of inferred importance on themselves either because of how they live, how they were born, or the specific things they have done. Charlie isn't unique because he's this weird human-animal hybrid; he's special because he's so far removed from what humanity has built around itself that he sees through the bullshit, whether he realizes it or not. That makes everybody feel uncomfortable. I initially thought the story would be much shorter, but this volume ends with the promise of a continuation. Considering the rising escalation regarding how our unique protagonist is screwed with by people who want to use him for their political gain, I'm sold. Even though the book wears its message on its sleeve, I'm curious to know how it sticks the landing, but that does make the first volume a bit hard to recommend out the gate. Regardless, if you're looking for something a bit more on the direct side with a rather unique approach, then I think this is a safe thing to check out and get you thinking.