Detroit: Become Human – Tokyo Stories – Volume 1 Review

Before I get into my review, there are two important things I want to let you, potential buyer, know before your purchase. First of all, this is a spin-off manga for the video game Detroit: Become Human, a Quantic Dream game currently out on PS4 and PC. The spin-off doesn’t spoil the whole story of the game (aside from one very important part in the middle of the game’s story) but it also doesn’t do any set-up of the world or why androids are the way they are, what the LED on their foreheads does or what ‘deviancy’ is, etc. The manga expects you to already know what happened in the game, and its setting, before diving into this, so make sure you do so before picking this up. The second thing is that this book is printed left-to-right, not in the typical right-to-left we’ve come to expect with manga. This is confusing to me, considering that if you go to Quantic Dream’s website, you can buy a Japanese copy of the manga, and the book is in the right-to-left format; however the panels are printed in the exact way as the English translation, left-to-right. I have no idea why or who decided that, but I wanted to flag it up in case such a change in format is a deal breaker for you.

Detroit: Become Human is set in the future, in a whole where androids are highly advanced, commonplace, and used everywhere; from doctors, to factory workers to housekeepers. They look similar to humans, but are visually recognised for their temple LED light, which changes colour depending on their system status (blue, yellow or red). They also have uniforms with their serial number, neon blue armbands and a triangle on the front. The world is full of charging stations and segregated sections for androids on buses and other places. They are programmed for one job and cannot go off it, or so we are led to believe. In Detroit, androids are breaking their programmes and becoming ‘deviant’ – full autonomy and free thought. Leading to them banding together and demanding equal rights and freedoms, but we’re not following the heroes of the uprising here. Tokyo Stories takes place roughly the same time as the game (late 2038) but contains smaller stories of the androids, and if they can also become deviant, in a world that both hates and loves them.

The first volume follows two androids so far, delivering one complete story for the idol android Reina (model number IC700) and the first part of Seiji (model number HB300) who’s a medical android. Let’s start with Reina, whose story has promise with a chilling intro from her fans who love her because she’s perfect and ‘she’ll never betray you’ as one of them put it. An android can’t have secret affairs or get into trouble, like a regular human idol would, because an android is just programmed for one thing: to sing and please her adoring fans. We’ve seen plenty of media around this from Perfect Blue to [Oshi No Ko] but I would have liked to have seen a Detroit: Become Human version of this, an android breaking her programming due to the overwhelming demands of the management and expectation to accept the darkest impulses of her fans. I think that would have been a great reason to deviate, but sadly that’s not the focus here. Instead, it’s focused on the relationship between Reina and a fellow upcoming idol Suzune, the adopted child of Reina’s manager who’s forcing her to become an idol. Suzune and Reina develop a cute bond over the course of the story, but as Suzune’s mother’s abuse escalates and Reina questions her manager, leading to deviating, I couldn’t help but think this is just a carbon copy of Kara’s deviation story from the Detroit: Become Human game. From the physical abuse, to the command on both androids: ‘don’t move’ (not interfere with the abuse) but then choosing to ignore the command to save the child. I’m not saying that Reina’s reason for deviating was wrong, but think it’s a real shame that we have the almost exact same story in game and printed format, when there was so much potential for a new story to tell. That said, there are some nice moments in this story; the dancing scene between Reina and Suzune as they bond is cute, and Ookawa, the junior manager, was also a fun addition to the cast with her wit and empathy for both her idols.

Then we have Seiji’s story, a medical android working in a hospital, but the human staff have to deal with many patient complaints about Seiji’s insensitive comments during appointments, such as ‘knowing how they feel’ when he clearly can’t, due to being a robot. We’ve only got a small part of his story so far, but I’m interested to see where it’s going. We didn’t see any medical androids in the main game, but they were alluded to. One of the main human characters, Hank, developed his hatred for androids due to one medical android being responsible for his son’s death, so to follow one in print format is interesting. Seiji sort of looks like the android Connor from the main game, but their personalities are not the same; so far Seiji is a lot more sterile (pun intended) and to the point, but his bond with the human doctor Takahashi is nice to see unfold. I like how Takahashi invites Seiji to lunch, even though androids don’t eat, and he just chats about his pregnant wife and work day. I also like the little bits of world building in this chapter too; it makes complete sense for Seiji to never be able to leave the hospital, and to have his data wiped completely if the hospital was to ever close down, because the androids contain sensitive patient information. There’s one small part in his chapter, which contains a patient attacking Seiji, due to androids replacing humans in the workforce and therefore human unemployment skyrocketing. This was touched on a bit in the game too, but I would have appreciated if the man in question used a different slur than ‘plastic prick’ for the android. It was a one-off line in the game, associated with a specific character, and it’s a fan-favourite line but it seems weird to hear it again in a random Japanese character with no connection to the game. The slur is common enough to be thought of by others, but I saw it more as the editor going ‘hey you love this line right? Well here it is again!’. Maybe I’m being harsh here, as you can probably tell by now, I love the original game a lot.

Quantic Dream is credited in this manga, with the story credits attributed to Kazami Sawatari, who’s got a few credits to his name, including manga and light novels, but this seems to be the only one translated into English so far. Art is by Moto Sumida, who also has a few manga credits, most notably Kamigami no Asobi which got an anime adaptation in 2014. I like his art; you can tell he ‘westernised’ his style for this series, but still kept a manga spirit with the big eyes and such; the iconic android uniforms are replicated well onto the page, and the character designs are all distinct too. I liked how the deviancy and android HUD board when damaged was also replicated onto the manga as well. John Neal provides the translation for Yen Press and there are no translation notes, which is a shame as I think it could have helped with some of the terminology to help those unfamiliar with Detroit: Become Human, or haven’t played it in a while, know what’s going on in places. But overall it reads very well, and I did like the first page being a brief synopsis of the main characters within this book.

Detroit: Become Human – Tokyo Stories – is an interesting spin-off from the original game. There’s a lot of potential to tell stories within this world, considering how interesting the landscape the game is set in is, and there is plenty of material left untapped in the game itself. This manga touches on SOME of it, but also copies a few emotional punches from the game that we didn’t need repeating. If you’re a fan of the game, I would check it out, there’s enough here to enjoy, I think. But I also hope that we see an improvement in the coming volumes.

Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.