A string of suicides numbering in the thousands begin to spring up all over the world and no one knows why.
Alive hooks you well with its start with its premise of suicides of unknown cause and origin, but quickly dissolves into your typical shonen manga with super powers, none of which are ground breaking even 17 volumes in, luckily Alive is well written enough to keep you hooked despite its change of focus.
Taisuke is your typical Japanese student and amidst the numerous incidence of suicides around the city, he finds his best friend Hirose surrounded by the corpses of his bullies. Hirose, eventually confessing to the murder of his oppressors reveals his new found powers to Taisuke. He says no one will be able to stop him now with his abilities, taking hostage of their friend Megumi in the process believing he is the only one capable of protecting her, leaving Taisuke behind in his hometown.
Taisuke ultimately heads out on his bike in search of Hirose and Megumi, to bring them home and get things back to normal. Along the way he’ll encounter Yuta and Nami who join him on his journey, but not without a fair bit of resistance at first. As they continue on they will encounter foes referred to as “comrades” who have their own set of powers and agendas Taisuke and group must overcome. Along the journey they’ll eventually discover the source and reasoning of their own powers, the story gradually developing into much more than a simple search and rescue.
Alive’s fight sequences are pretty nice, battles involve more or less some logic and strategy. They are well drawn, clean and easy to follow. There are powers I haven’t seen before and though the clichéd ones are the more action oriented, wind and fire powers for example, most of the fights are enjoyable.
The overarching storyline and characters themselves will keep you reading more so than the fights. A minor gripe of mine is that the entire explanation of why things are happening the way they are (the cause of the suicides and the reasoning behind everyone’s powers) is pretty much explained within 3 pages of panels and then quickly discarded to the side.
My major problem with the manga is Hirose. Quite frankly there is nothing cool about an unstable little 13 year old or however old he is despite how powerful he thinks he has become and worse yet he is a major focus of the story. Yes, he has had a pretty messed up experience involving his parents that explains a majority of his behavior, but he’s not very likeable at all, not in the sense where you don’t like a bad guy because he’s evil and a jerk and stuff, Hirose on the contrary is just a dumb kid in the end.
Overall, the story, characters, and art are good, the manga does play quite a bit with your standard clichés (come on amnesia again?!) but generally it’s a very enjoyable read.
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