Void: No. Nine Volume 1 Review

“Anyone else hear screaming?”

Three teams of three, Red, Yellow and Blue, set out on a scavenging mission in the maze of tunnels below Reclamation City No. 9. In the tunnels, they could run into an Emissary from the ‘Old World’, so they’re issued with a small injectable dose of E-serum just in case they have to defend themselves. Or as Raku from the Red team sums it up, “God destroyed the Old World. Humanity killed god. The Emissaries remain.” Each team also takes a Canary, a little robot, to communicate with the surface if they get into difficulties. They also use aliases because, as Siang (Yellow) warns, “Imagine what would happen if one of us struck it rich here… and the others could look up where they live…” There’s a financial incentive not to get killed; everyone who returns from the mission receives a bonus payment on top of whatever they earn from scavenging for relics and minerals. Firearms are forbidden but teams are allowed to sabotage each other so anything goes. And, of course, as the team members size each other up, it soon becomes apparent that every single one of them has issues and/or a hidden agenda. Though maybe not as up-front as Ira (Red) who coolly tells the other two in his team, “I came here to kill someone.”

And then Asa from Yellow Team encounters an Emissary…

In Void: No. Nine, Shima Shinya (Lost Lad of London, Glitch) takes us into a dystopian far-future in which the world above ground is a barren landscape and what remains of humanity is existing in a highly ordered, stratified society.

There’s much to intrigue in the world-building in this first volume and the mangaka’s very distinctive, stark art style seems ideally suited to evoking this bleak far-future society (there’s nothing like a theme of exploring dark, abandoned tunnels to create a sense of anticipatory dread in the reader). Add to that an ill-assorted collection of bounty hunters, each team member with a secret in their past and a motive other than treasure-hunting to muddy the waters, and there’s a great deal more at stake than who can find the most valuable materials deep below ground.

However, there are also some issues that make this first volume (of four) not the easiest of reads. I’m not asking for everything to be spelled out; that would spoil the suspense! But it would have been preferable, maybe, to get to know one team of three before jumping to the other teams and several of their back stories, with the end result that we don’t really know any of them well enough to care a great deal by the end of the volume. An added problem, strangely, is recognizing who’s who because of the different hair styles and real names, not aliases in the flashbacks. It feels like SF style over substance – even if it is very classy style! Shima Shinya respects the readers’ intelligence to work things out but this also means giving very little in the way of help; everything’s pared down to the bone. Add to that the knowledge that the series has unfortunately been cancelled at four volumes and it’s a little demoralizing (as it must have been for the mangaka) to wonder how much she was able to explore and resolve in the complex story being set up here in this first volume.

Translation for Yen Press is ably done by Abigail Blackman with lettering choices by Sean McCann that suit the style of the drawings. There are no extras apart from a really useful simple character chart at the end and a one-image preview of Volume 2. A big plus for fans of the mangaka’s art is the inclusion of four striking colour pages at the beginning, setting the scene and introducing us to the nine protagonists (and the two who are coordinating their scavenging mission). Volume 2 is due out in September.

Shima Shinya’s stylish and ‘different’ art makes this SF series well worth a look, although because of the various plotlines being set in motion, I advise you’ll need to read this one at least more than once to work out what’s going on.

Read a free preview on the Yen Press website here.

Our review copy was supplied by the publisher Yen Press.