This eight-volume manga comic series starts with a bang.
Believability reigns until the last volume before several revelations make the plot almost inedible.
The story does conclude with an unexpected ominous tone.
A man is kidnapped, locked up in a room for ten years, and as inexplicably, released. A quiet tinge of revenge and the confounding question fills the man - Who the hell did this to him and why?
Determined to get his revenge barehanded, our man straddles around bustling Tokyo looking for clues.
Bit by bit, even as his detection begins to pay off, voila, the nemesis shows himself, leading to a tense, psychological encounter that ends with a death. If you are looking for a genre, this is a manga of suspense.
Excellent story and illustrations, Old Boy is superlative stuff if not an immediate manga classic.
More on manga
A manga has illustrations and dialogues that resemble detailed storyboards. From its 1950s origins in Japan, manga has sprawled into the English reading world.
The traditional Japanese manga book format is usually replicated in English editions - a manga is read from the back page, right to left.
A sword slash could extend to pages, the immense detailing adds an intricate atmosphere to the telling, sinking us deeper into the tale. Thus a singular story of manga extends into volumes, seldom do they end in a single book.
Action-adventure is a popular genre, as are romance, comedy, science fiction, and murder mysteries.
Violence and sex are recurring features in most manga works.
Many manga book covers carry the PARENTAL ADVISORY tag for EXPLICIT CONTENT.
Endnote
The Old Boy manga inspired the 2003 South Korean film of the same name and Spike Lee's Oldboy (2013), a Josh Brolin-starring official remake.
The 2006 Hindi film Zinda, starring Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham was inspired by the 2003 film rather than the book.
(Article by Snehith Kumbla)
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