Old Boy Book 4

"I was afraid of myself" - Goto

Time for the fourth volume in the Old Boy series.  Old Boy was a Japanese manga that ran from 1996-98, written by Garon Tsuchiya, drawn by Nobuaki Minegishi and translated into English by Kumar Sivasubramanian.  It inspired the much more famous 2003 South Korean film of the same name, although the film and the manga diverge quite considerably as the story moves along.  The eight volumes tell one, intense, on-going storyline rather than being split into arcs like western comics tend to be.  Previously On Old Boy:  Imprisoned for ten years in a private yakuza run jail which was paid for by a man going by the alias "Dojima", thirty five year old Shinichi Goto is released one night without warning and starts his quest to discover who and why felt the need to punish him so.  After hooking up and sleeping with a young woman called Eri on his first night of freedom he finds himself under constant survelleilance by a hired thuggish henchman and GPS chips implanted in his body and clothes.  He manages to discover the floor of the building he was held on and started on a plan to infiltrate the yakuza to discover more, but Dojima shut down that line of inquiry which turned out to be a dead end anyway.  Now the "game" is just between Dojima and Goto. Goto is currently crashing at a bar called Moon Dog run by an old friend of his, a jovial fellow called Tsukamoto.  At the end of the last volume, Goto was put in the weird position of having to have sex with a woman and make her orgasm so she could reveal a post-hypnotic suggestion that would provide a major clue for him.  He obliges her and is told "Remember...your teen years".  And now the continuation.

[Note:  This manga is "unflipped" so must be read from right to left, and the sound effects have been left in the original Japanese and subtitled instead]

The woman he nailed leaves the bar saying there is no point in following her, she knows nothing else.  Later Goto wander round Shinjuku pondering her clue.  He calls Tsukamoto who arrives at a meeting place with him and Goto asks him if he could get his yearbooks - Elementary, Junior High and High School from his parents place.  When Tsukamoto asks if this has something to do with his missing ten years, Goto says nothing.

Talking with Goto must be frustrating some times.

Tsukamoto obliges and goes to Goto's parent place.  He finds out that it's just Goto's father now, his mother passed from lung cancer six years ago.  Goto's father order in sushi and they share a meal.  Unable to tell him Goto is alive, Tsukamoto requests the books making a somewhat lame story up about Goto's friends meeting up and wanting to remember him.  But Goto's father hands them over without question.

Back at the Moon Dog bar, Tsukamoto gives Goto the yearbooks and tells him is mother is dead.  Goto looks sad for a moment then responds with an "I see."  Later that night he breaks into his old high school, hoping it can help jog his memory.  He goes to his classroom and recalls how he used to enjoy sitting by the window.  He wanders about before leaving in frustration.

Goto: "It's hopeless.  I don't remember anything that would make someone hate me."

He goes to Eri's place and meets her as she returns home from work.  She is very pleased to see him. He warns her he is probably still under surveillance but she doesn't care and tells him not to worry on her account.

Goto: "For some reason I wanted to be near this girl's positivity so badly I could hardly stand it."

With Eri again.

He spreads out his yearbooks back in her flat, he says he can't recall anyone hating him back then.  Eri says the person might not hate him, what if he liked him?  What if he wanted him?  What if his love got twisted?  "I'm not a homo" stammers Goto.  Eri says the attraction was one-sided. "He loved you all by himself."  And a scowling Goto with Eri holding onto him regards his yearbooks afresh.

Finally Goto snaps "It can't be possible" and Eri decides to change the subject.  She asks what he was like in school.  Goto says he wasn't a "bookworm" nor was he a "deliquent" and "I just kept to myself."  Eri encourages him to dig further and Goto says "It feels painful somehow, to remember these things."  We then get a look outside at Dojima, who is in a van listening in via the bug in Eri's flat.

Dojima watches from afar.

Goto and Eri go out and Eri says she wants to go for a boat ride.  They row a boat out into the middle of a lake and enjoy their lunch.  Dojima and his henchman observe them from the shore.  Eri then tells Goto she doesn't think it's safe to talk in her flat, hence the boat ride.  Goto apologises for the imposition in her life, but she tells him that she doesn't mind and she hopes one day he'll win his "war" so they can "be lovers for real." He the carries on talking about his teen years and admits he was afraid.

Goto: "I felt somehow I wasn't cut out right for the world we live in.  That someday I might end up doing something terrible."

Dojima's thug lip reads this to Dojima who thinks to himself "impossible!".  Goto says he dealt with these feelings by deciding to "live the most subdued and ordinary life I could."

He graduated high school and got a job at a small ad agency.  For eight years he lived a normal life.  Then he has a sense of foreboding, that the thing he had a lid on had launched a "counter attack".  He became a drunk and a gambler until one day he woke up in the cell and was locked up there for ten years.  Goto says "it's too bizarre", but Eri assures him she still believes him.

His nightmare begins.

Dojima and his henchman sit in the car.  Dojima asks if he is at all curious about what Dojima is doing.  The henchman says it's not his place to question his employer.  Dojima then tells him after a minor accident a few years ago he has plastic surgery on his face  and "became a completely new man".

Later Goto returns to the Moon Dog alone.  He sits at the end of the bar deep in thoguht and doesn't notice when Dojima comes and sits next to him and sets up a "Bottle keep" (reserving a specific bottle for his use only).  Dojima's secretary arrives much to the delight of Tsukamoto, "I don't see a knockout like that every day".

She sits and drinks with Dojima.  As the bar fills up, Goto goes to play mahjong.  When he returns to the now empty bar, Tsukamoto tells him about the woman and how come Goto didn't notice her nor the man sat next to her?  Later Goto is sleeping on the floor of the bar when he wakes in a cold sweat.  He goes to get a drink and notices the bottle with "Alias Dojima" written on it.

Name on bottle: "Alias Dojima".

Goto is confused and tries to picture the man but thinks that he has never seen him in his life before.  Next day he and Tsukamoto go out for a meal.  Tsukamoto says he hopes Dojima and the woman become regulars, "I might get my chance someday."  Goto doesn't recall her.  Tsukamoto says him being gone for ten years has "deadened all the sexual urges you are supposed to feel when you see a woman!"  Oh if only he knew.  Goto tells him to phone him at the mahong parlor next time she comes in:

Goto: "I'll take a good look at her next time as part of my sexual rehabilitation."

Three days later, she returns.  Tsukamoto phones Goto, then he starts chatting with her.  She says she doesn't want to say too much about what Dojima does, only that he's an executive with a certain "venture business."  She comments that Dojima has taken a liking to the bar.  Goto arrives and Tsukamoto introduces her to him, she gives her name as Kyoko Kataoka.  She then takes a call from Dojima saying he'll be there in ten minutes.  And Goto stiffens his resolve for the coming confrontation with a few drinks.

Dojima enters and the atmosphere gets tense.  Smiling Dojima introduces himself to Goto as "Alias Dojima".  Goto mumbles his name in return.  Tsukamoto thinks using an alias is cool.  Goto thinks "we've spoken on the phone so many times, that's not his voice." They all drink some more then Kyoko asks if Tsukamoto does food. He only has snacks so Kyoko and he go to a nearby sushi place to grab something to eat leaving Goto and Dojima alone.

The first meeting.

Dojima then calls the bar phone on his mobile and demonstrates how his mobile shifts his voice up an octave so he is definitely the man Goto has been talking to.  Now sure of his identity, Goto grabs him and pushes him up against the wall.

Goto: "Why?!  What's your grudge against me?"

Dojima says he can go ahead and kill him but he'll never solve the mystery then.  Kyoko and Tsukamoto return with food and they all, bar Goto, tuck in.  Dojima says he and Goto "really get along" and they'll go fishing on his boat one day soon.  Day dawns and Kyoko and Dojima leave.  Tsukamoto wonders if they are sleeping together.  Tsukamoto then comments that Goto and Dojima must have had a really good talk while he was getting food. "Yeah we really hit it off, like old friends" sighs Goto and pours another drink.

Later, alone in the bar, Goto is totally drunk.  He phones Eri and tells her "my enemy showed himself."  He got wasted because he couldn't stand it.  He apologises for calling her in such a state.  She says she now thinks Goto was imprisoned for one reason:

Eri: "No one these days knows what it means to live any more.  But you're different with your idillyic manliness.  That's why he made you a target.  Don't you see?  This man, your enemy's reason for living is you."

Drunken phonecalls, always fun to get.

Goto asks her what he should do?  She says to not be provoked and hurry up and remember what he is supposed to.  We then jump forward a few days to Dojima, Kyoko, Tsukamoto and Goto all in a car on the way to Dojima's boat to do some fishing.  Tsukamoto coming courtesy of Goto's request.

On the boat, Tsukamoto has fun fishing and flirting with Kyoko.  Goto sits apart, sulking.  At dinner, Kyoko says Dojima has taken a real liking to the Moon Dog "[It's] got this jazzy, bluesy feel about it doesn't it?"  Goto thinks Dojima is getting Tsukamoto in his pocket so he'll have an excuse to stay in contact with Goto.  Tsukamoto asks if he can stay and do some night fishing, Dojima agrees.  That night Dojima and Goto sit together and talk.

Dojima: "The reason I locked you away for ten years is because I couldn't forgive you."

"For what?!" responds Goto.  Dojima says that acknowledging that a man like Goto exists makes me "nothing more than a vile pervert."  Are you gay, asks Goto?  "No that's not it" says Dojima.  Then why lock me up, asks Goto again?

Dojima: "'If only you didn't exist' in my teen years that's all I thought about."

Dojima and Goto fish at night.

Dojima says they were classmates, but Goto says he's never seen him before.  Angrily Goto says "no more bullshit" and threatens Dojima with physical harm.  Dojima just laughs and asks if he "has what it takes to be a killer?"  He then takes out a small pistol and holds it to his own head.  He offers it to Goto who refuses it.  Dojima reiterates that threats of violence are "meaningless" and tosses the gun in the sea.

He then says he wants he and Goto to have an "equal match" and that if Goto recalls what he wants him to, he'll kill himself.  He then offers money to Goto to start a business and get back on his feet.  But Goto refuses his money, and says he will remember what Dojima wants him to and they shake hands on it.

Dojima then tells him about his plastic surgery and that he also won't recall his voice because he was a "sullen and silent child".  They call it a night and the next day Goto comes down for breakfast and Dojima is out swimming in the sea.  And thus ends book four exactly halfway through the storyline.

It's that moon again.

This volume is another atmospheric one, quite a bit of it is just silent establishing of time and place via Nobuaki Minegishi's gritty and realistic art.  The long awaited meeting of Goto and Dojima shows just how in control of the "game" Dojima is now.  You can almost feel Goto's frustration's boiling off the page as Dojima drops little hints here and there. It's also interesting, in retrospect to see Dojima refusing to believe Goto was an isolated child himself.  And Goto's fear of what he might turn into almost turns his time in prison into a way of saving him from that shadow self as Goto learned self control and some measure of inner equilibrium there.  The next volume sees the final major character introduced, a woman from Goto and Dojima's shared past, so join me in a few days to find out who she is.

Old Boy Book 3 (NSFW)

NSFW:  Image of sexy, sexy funtime!

"You understand?  This game is purely between you and me" - Dojima

Time for the third volume in the Old Boy series.  Old Boy was a Japanese manga that ran from 1996-98, written by Garon Tsuchiya, drawn by Nobuaki Minegishi and translated into English by Kumar Sivasubramanian.  It inspired the much more famous 2003 South Korean film of the same name, although the film and the manga diverge quite considerably as the story moves along.  The eight volumes tell one, intense, on-going storyline rather than being split into arcs like western comics tend to be.  Previously on Old Boy:  Ten years ago a twenty-five year old man called Shinichi Goto was kidnapped and held for a decade in a private, Yakuza run prison, his "sentence" paid for by a rich man going by the alias "Dojima" who seems to have a bottomless well of hate for Goto.  After his release, Goto meets and sleeps with a young woman called Eri who spots and helps him remove a GPS tracking chip in his shoulder.  Goto manages to track down the location of the prison via the restaurant who delivers meals to the floor it's on and he questions a guard stationed there at gun-point.  The guard doesn't know who paid for Goto to be locked up, only that a Chief in their organsation called "Saijo" might have closed the deal.  Goto then surprises the thuggish man following him and demands to speak to Dojima over the phone, who agrees to continue their little "game".  Goto then locates an old friend from his pre-prison life called Tsukamoto, who owns a bar he lets Goto stay in. Goto also meets up with his now married lover from back then, neither she nor Tsukamoto can get the truth of where he has been out of him, and cannot answer his question of who might have hated him back then either. The last volume ended with Goto finding another GPS chip in his shoe as Dojima continues to monitor him.  And now the continuation.

Shinjuku Golden Gai sleeps.

[Note:  This manga is "unflipped" so must be read from right to left, and the sound effects have been left in the original Japanese and subtitled instead]

Day dawns in the Shinjuku Golden Gai where the Moon Dog bar is located.  A homeless man shuffles into the bar where Goto is sleeping and hands him a mobile phone, he takes the tracking chip in return and leaves.  Goto follows him and sees the homeless man being paid by Dojima's thug.  Goto comes over to the thug's car and the thug instructs him to press one on the speed-dial to get directly in touch with Dojima.  The phone is illegal and can't be traced and with that he drives off.

A new phone

Tsukamoto is betting at the races.  He takes a break and phones Mitsuko, Goto's old lover.  She says she couldn't get anything out of Goto other than the suspicion he was caught up in"something complicated and mysterious."  Tsukamoto asks to meet her for tea and she agrees.  Later on they discuss Goto some more, Tsukamoto asks if she had anyone else on the side when she was dating him.  She says no she was "head-over-heals in love" with Goto back then.  Tsukamoto says he had to asks because he needs to know if anyone truly hated Goto back then.

The action then returns to Goto, still regarding the mobile with suspicion.  He wonders if he should take the intiative and phone Dojima.  Instead he phones Tsukamoto on the bar's phone, Tsukamoto tells him the bar isn't open sundays so Goto can have a drink in peace.  Finally Goto calls Dojima who is relaxing in his expensive and spacious home.

Dojima at rest.

Dojima comments that the mobile "makes them friends" and laughs.  Goto asks if he'll ever show his face or will he just keep playing childish games.  Dojima calls foul, if Goto really has had enough he can just toss the phone and get out of their "game."  Dojima then says he plans to meet Goto one day and tonight he'll let him see his face.

He instructs Goto to be on a certain bridge at a certain time.  Goto travels close to their by taxi and walks the rest of the way deep in thought.  When he reaches the bridge, Eri is there.  She says she got a phonecall telling her she could meet Goto on the bridge so she took time off work to come.  She hugs him while Goto glowers and looks impotently out over the water for a look at his nemesis.

Reunited.

Eri says she doesn't know what happened to him after he found Shiseiryu.  He goes back to her place and fills her in.  He asks what kind of voice the person who called her had.  Eri says it was a "nice" voice, female, most likely a company secretary.

Goto: "Y-you got all that from her voice?"

Eri: "If a girl can't figure out that much she'll never make it in today's world."

Goto tells her he's been watched ever since he was released.  Eri realise Goto is worried about her.  She says she doubts his enemies will abduct and torture her.  Goto mutters that is how the Yakuza used to work.

Eri: "I think your enemies are deeper, sicker people."

Eri then asks Goto what he thinks his life would be like if he hadn't been imprisoned.  Goto says he'd be a "happy slave".  He'd go about his business whether he was happy or sad. He'd be married with kids, and would unwind at the races or playing golf.

Goto: "I'm not the type to pull my hair out looking for a meaningful life."

Eri then asks iof his thoughts since being released are just of revenge.  Goto says he felt something more.  A "freedom I never thought I'd feel again".  Did he feel that freedom because the life he would have had was gone?  Then he says that being consumed with revenge would be just what his captor wanted.  So "I swore... I'd get my revenge my way.  Playing it loose and easy".

Bad time for a call.

Eri hugs him saying again that he mustn't worry about her.  They make love, but Goto's mobile phone rings while they are doing it and when he answers it, he gets no reply.  The mood somewhat shattered, a naked Goto frowns at the phone in his hand again.

Now dressed, Eri takes the phone and tries to find out its number but it's blocked.  Goto says it's probably because the phone is illegal.  Eri makes to press the button to call Dojima and Goto panics, snatching the phone off her.  He then apologises.  Eri calls her flat's phone from it and it works.  She then walks with him as she makes her way to her work.  He finally reveals his full name to her: "I remembered my name from ten years back.  Shinichi Goto."

They share a taxi and when she gets out, she tells him to call her.  Back at the Moon Dog bar, thoughts whirl round Goto's head.  "He's setting the pace" he thinks in frustration.  He remembers back to his incarceration, how he spotted the truth behind all the TV shows.  Somehow this led him into the mindset of the people who locked him up.

Goto: "After ten years.  I get the sense that the mentality if the criminals who did this shocking thing to me and the mentality of my 'tv enemy' are strikingly similar."

He goes for a walk and silently tosses the mobile into the road where a lorry crushes it.  He goes for a nap in the park, still thinking he's under surveillance.  He then goes to a boxing gym which he thinks has "yakuza written all over it."  He goes in and asks to spar.  He says he wants to fight the Japanese welter-weight champion who goes there.  The coach agrees and Goto goes and kills some time before the match.

Goto tests himself out.

He remembers how when he was locked up he watched boxing on TV and shadow boxed against the fighters.  He thinks Japanese boxing has lost it edge and that "the odds are in my favour". He returns to the gymn and gets into the ring with the champion.  They set about each other and Goto wins easily, knocking the champion out.  His plan is to get some information about the yakuza boss "Saijo" who had him locked up, and he hopes his performance will get him an in with the organisation.

As expected, after his win the coach first offers him a paid place in his gym.  When Goto refuses, the man hands him a card saying he can go there and meet the "boss" at least, which is exactly what Goto wanted.

Goto returns to the Moon Dog bar, with Dojima's thug shadowing him.  He reports that he has "no idea what he's up to."  Inside, Tsukamoto asks Goto if he has any leads on the man who hates him.  Goto doesn't answer.  Next day he whiles away the time playing mahjong and walking around Tokyo.  He decides to give it a week before going to the yakuza joint he's been given the address of.

Goto on the hunt.

Back at the Moon Dog, Tsukamoto says a "nice looking woman came here looking for you".  Goto thinks it's Eri and then panics because he didn't give her the address of this place.  He phones her flat and leaves a message asking if she was threatened into coming there.  Later Eri picks the message up and is confused as she has no idea what he is talking about and he didn't leave a number to call him back on.

Tsukamoto leaves Goto in charge of the bar saying he doesn't get many customers and if he does, he should give them their bottles (people seem to reserve bottles in his bar) and snacks and they'll pay next time.  Goto sits and drinks alone, until an attractive woman he doesn't recognise comes into the bar.  She knows his name and orders a scotch, then says "Shall I take you to meet Saijo?"

Another woman for Goto.

She then tells him to join her in a drink or she'll leave.  He pours himself a scotch and gulps it down.  She tells him he'll be meeting Saijo under certain conditions.  When he tries to stand, he collapses.  He's been drugged, she never drank her drink so the bottle was spiked.  She tapes his eyes shut then helps him to his feet.  Leaning against her he is able to walk to the car where Dojima's thug is waiting to take them to Saijo.

They arrive at a scrapyard and she leads him to another car with Saijo in it.  Turns out he wasn't in jail, he was in Hawaii setting up drug and prostitution rackets.  All it took was one phonecall from Dojima to bring him back to answer Goto's questions.  He says "There are people in life scarier than the yakuza."

Saijo

Goto asks the name of the man who had him locked up.  Saijo says he was called Dojima and he got the impression he'd got rich during the economic bubble.  He couldn't tell what age he was, he can't think of anything helpful.  He then leaves saying "No way I'm getting any deeper into this fucked up mess."

The woman returns as the muscle relaxant Goto was given wears off.  They get in a car and drive back to the Moon Dog.  In the car, Dojima calls Goto and says he offered up Saijo because he didn't want Goto getting any deeper into the world of the yakuza and get distracted from the game between the two of them.  The floor 7.5 organisation will have no more to do with anything as he has blackmailed them into leaving Goto alone.  Also the name Dojima is an alias so the yakuza angle is a total dead end.

Back at the Moon Dog, the woman disposes of the rest of the drugged whiskey.  Goto wonders why, out of all the brands they stock, he chose that one.  The woman says he was agitated and "susceptible to suggestion".  All she had to do was mutter the name of the whiskey and he would choose it. 

One way to interrogate someone I guess.

They talk some more, she admits she was offered three hundred thousand yen for a "thrilling job" drugging and taking him to Saijo. She then tells him she's been implanted with a post-hypnotic suggestion herself.

Woman: "So that if we have sex and you make me come I can give you a very important hint in this game".

So slightly reluctantly, Goto bends her over the bar and starts literally pumping her for information.  She does indeed orgasm and says "The past... remember your teen years".  And that brings book three to a conclusion.

This book does a good job of tying up the plot thread of the yakuza angle by making it yet another demonstration of Dojima's power and influence.  Despite Goto's best efforts he's being outmanuvered at every turn, each time he opens an independent line of enquiry, Dojima shuts him down, he believes the game is between just him and Goto and after this volume Goto pretty much capitulates to Dojima's powerplays and follows the clues he's given rather than investigate idependently.  We also have Dojima offering up another woman for Goto to have sex with, and the revelation of hypnotic suggestions being used will have reverberations much later in the series as well.  Join me in a few days time for book four and the long awaited first meeting between Goto and Dojima.

Old Boy Book 2

"Why did you lock me away for ten years?" - Goto

Time for the second volume in the Old Boy series.  Old Boy was a Japanese manga that ran from 1996-98, written by Garon Tsuchiya, drawn by Nobuaki Minegishi and translated into English by Kumar Sivasubramanian.  It inspired the much more famous 2003 South Korean film of the same name, although the film and the manga diverge quite considerably as the story moves along.  The eight volumes tell one, intense on-going storyline rather than being split into arcs like western comics tend to be.  Previously on Old Boy:  The main character Goto Shinichi was kidnapped one night ten years ago and imprisoned in a private Yakuza run prison paid for by a man going by the alias "Dojima" who seems completely obssessed with him.  After Goto's release he meets with a young woman called Eri who he sleeps with on his first night of freedom.  Dojima continues to stalk Goto, who discovers a GPS tracking chip embedded in his back, which Eri cuts out for him.  Now he plans to use the chip to fool his stalker and be in two places at once.  The first volume ended with Goto following his first lead to the lock-up and who did this to him - the Chinese restaurant he was fed from all those years.  Having discovered part of a receipt in his food one day, he has narrowed it down to ones called "Seiryu" (Blue Dragon) so they visit the first on the list and he tucks into some gyoza (dumplings) to see if it is the one while Eri looks on anxiously.  And now, the continuation.

[Note:  This manga is "unflipped" so must be read from right to left, and the sound effects have been left in the original Japanese and subtitled instead]

Eri and Goto

"Nope" says Goto as he chews the gyoza.  Eri breathes a sigh, saying she was so nervous.  They eat up and move onto the next Seiryu on the list.  Eri asks if he is seriously going to all eight in one evening, he says yes and she doesn't have to eat as well as him.  In the next one Eri asks why he is choosing to try the gyoza.  Goto says that in his opinion it's the one food that tastes unique to each restaurant even made with the same ingrediants.

They travel from restaurant to restaurant and Eri notes the detirmination in Goto's face.  They finally only have one left to try.  "This has to be it!" exclaims Eri.  They order gyoza and Goto eats, then he says "no".  The action then jumps forward to him and Eri in bed together.  Goto goes for a bath and broods, crushing his beer can in silent frustration.

Eri gets out the phonebook to recheck the restuarants and notices something he missed.  There is one restaurant called "Shiseiryu" she excitedly tells him.  Maybe the reciept fragment was missing the "Shi" part.  Goto says nothing, but envelops her in a loving embrace.

D'awwww.

Later Eri goes to work, so Goto goes to scout the restaurant, but doesn't go in yet.  He returns to his job on a building site where he has stashed the GPS chip under the pillow on his bed in the flophouse.  Next day he works and ponders the chip, then the site manager comes up while they are on a break and offers some leftover pro-wrestling tickets. "My chance!" thinks Goto.  He and his bunkmate Kassim go to the fight and Goto starts thinking about boxing instead and how it seemed to change over the decade he was locked up.

Goto: "It was one phony, weak-kneed 'world champion' after another.  Shamelessly talking themselves up.  Is boxing dead?"

He snaps out of his reverie and asks Kassim for a favour.  Could he look after the chip while Goto slips out for an "appointment".  Kassim agrees and Goto leaves and travels finally to Shiseiryu.

Goto enters the restaurant with some trepidation.  He orders gyoza, and surreptiously checks the place for anyone who might have noticed him.  He finally takes a bite of the dumpling and pulls a pained, then resolute face.  He has found the right restaurant at last.  He knew from the TV that the time when his evening meal was delivered was between seven and eight o'clock.  He then sees the cook hand over a large order to a delivery boy to be taken to "the usual place." 

This manga always makes me hungry.

Goto tails the delivery boy to a twelve story building nearby.  Goto gets into a lift and visits all twelve floors but none of them are the lock-up.  Convinced that this is the correct building he deduces the floor must be secret, so he returns to the flophouse to think about his next move.  He retrieves the GPS chip from Kassim who asks what it is, "a very important lucky charm" says Goto.

He decides he's going to have to do something "risky and totally reckless" now to locate the secret floor.  That evening he returns and when the delivery boy enters the lift he goes in with him.  He is also carrying the chip so whoever is monitoring him will "panic" when they see where he is.

He tells the delivery boy "same floor as you.  I'm with the gang".  The delivery boy presses the buttons for floor seven and eight at the same time and this takes them to the hidden floor 7.5, the lock-up floor.  Goto leaps over the crouching delivery boy and kicks the gun out of the lone guard's hand, knocking him out.  He then makes the delivery boy hand out all the meals to the inmates before locking him in an empty cell.  The guard comes around and Goto uses his gun to threaten him into talking and demands to know who had him locked up.

A Goto of vengeance.

The guard says he knows very little, he's no more than an "errand boy in this gang".  And has only been stationed at the lock-up for three months.  He was told Goto was their "special guest" and that someone paid three hundred million yen to have him imprisoned.  "You must'a really pissed someone off" comments the guard.  Goto asked who arranged the job, the guard says he thinks it was someone called "Saijo" but he's not sure:

Guard: "Because this lock-up business operates on a strict principle of secrecy, people trust us and we get constant requests.  It all comes down to money."

They never ask for a client's private information so there is no paper trail and things stay secret.  He thinks it was Saijo because ten years ago he got a huge promotion straight to chief.  Unfortunately for Goto, Saijo is currently serving a seven year sentence in a real prison so he won't be able to question him.  Having exhausted this line of enquiry, Goto tosses him in the same cell as the delivery boy and locks them in.  He regards the gun for a moment.

Goto: "This thing could limit the way I think, the way I act.. I'll get my revenge bare handed."

The guard faces a calmly angry Goto.

He drops it and takes the lift down to the basement.  He slips out through the parking garage thinking if he has a tail they must be in there.  He doesn't see anyone, but after he leaves Dojima's thug drops down from the ceiling.  Some of the higher ups in the gang come down and free the locked up guard and delivery boy.  When told it was Goto, one of them wonders why. "Wantin' to settle old scores?" suggest another.

Meanwhile Goto is lurking outside the building and sees Dojima's thug exit the parking garage and get into his car.  The thug checks the GPS tracker and is startled to find Goto is still nearby.  Goto comes up to his car and knocks on the window, then tells the thug "I want to speak to your boss".  The thug hesitates and looks ready to drive off, but Goto says if he leaves he'll toss the GPS chip and he'll never be found again.  So the thug lets him in the car and phones Dojima.

Dojima's thug gets a surprise.

"I found the lock-up" says Goto over the phone to Dojima who is on the bullet train with his female secretary.  Goto asks him why he had him locked up.  Dojima stays silent.  Goto asks if he is staying silent because he'll recognise his voice? "I would avoid such simple conclusions" says Dojima finally, telling Goto how would he be able to tell his voice apart from all the others he's heard in his life.  Goto asks if he'd recognise his face and that "you and I have got some kind of connection in our pasts".  Maybe, responds Dojima.  Then he states:

Dojima: "The reason I locked you away like that is because I wanted to ruin you."

Goto asks why he didn't just have him killed, but Dojima in return asks him how he kept his sanity all those years.  Goto doesn't answer either, but says they should meet up and talk face-to-face.  Suddenly the thug sets off Goto's seat's airbag and sprays something in his face that knocks him out.  Dojima tells him to take him to a hotel somewhere.  he arrives at the same hotel later and contemplates Goto sprawled unconcious on the bed.

Dojima is one creepy guy.

The next morning Goto wakes up naked and in bed next to a nude woman.  She's a prostitute hired by Dojima to have sex with Goto but he just slept all night.  She offers herself to him - "Hey I came all this way, lets screw at least once."  But Goto brushes her off and she leaves in a huff.  Are you mad Goto?  Never look a gift-ho in the mouth!  He dresses and stands looking out of the hotel window and his frown deepens.

Dojima phones his hotel phone and pretends that now he has taken his chip back his surveillance of Goto is at an end.  Goto says that Dojima failed to "ruin" him and that:

Goto: "I don't know why you hate me so much, but you've clung to me so hard this far.. I don't think you're going to let go of me now."

Dojima agrees and tells him he'll be in touch.  Goto leaves the hotel and mooches around Tokyo a bit thinking all he can do now is sit and wait.  He travels to a racetrack and makes a beeline for a bearded man placing bets on races.  The man sees him and is shocked, "You!  You're alive" he says.

Reunion with Tsukamoto.

It's now that Goto's name is revealed to the reader and the bearded man is called Tsukamoto one of Goto's best friends.  After the races they return to the bar Tsukamoto owns called "Moon Dog".  When Tsukamoto asks where Goto has been all this time, Goto evades the question by replying  "It's difficult to explain".

Goto asks about his lover at the time he disappeared, called Mitsuko.  Tsukamoto tells him that she got married six years ago and has a young daughter.  Goto says that as long as she is happy that's all that matters.  Goto then asks Tsukamoto if he knows or remembers anyone who hated him ten years ago.  Tsukamoto can't think of anyone and soon Goto has passed out from the whiskey and is sleeping face down on the bar.

Mitsuko.

Tsukamoto phones Mitsuko and tells her "Goto's alive".  She is shocked as well, and when Tsukamoto asks if she can come to the bar, she immediately agrees and gets her sister to babysit.  When she arrives at the bar, Tsukamoto explains that Goto won't say where he has been all this time and shakes Goto awake. Goto regards Mitsuko with a sad expression and they both take a walk together.

Goto: "Please believe me.  I didn't run away from you.  Someone.. set me up.  That's all I can say."

She doesn't press him any further and he muses that back then he probably would have married her.  Now though, she should forget about him, he doesn't want to hurt her family.  She asks if he needs any help, but he refuses saying "my strength is my asset".  She says at least she can treat him to a meal and they go for food.  Afterwards they part and Goto tells her to "be thankful for the life you've got."

A life that could have been.

Back with Tsukamoto, he says Goto can sleep in the bar during the day if he wants.  Goto beds down, but then Dojima calls him on the bar phone.  He tells a confused Goto, who wonders how the hell Dojima knew where he was, that he'll get him a mobile phone tommorrow so they'll have a hotline to each other.  After he hangs up, Goto prises the heel of his shoe open and finds another GPS chip inside it.  And on that revelation, book two ends.

Another pacey and exciting volume here.  Although the investigation into the lock-up turns out to be a dead end it still supplies some cool moments and as a way of drawing out Goto's stalker proves he is clever and resourceful.  However he is up against Dojima who is a master player, the only one able to screw with Goto's head and we'll find out more about the psychopathology of a man who'll pay a prostitute to sleep with the object of his obssession as the story goes on.  Getting a glimpse of Goto's life before he was imprisoned proves bittersweet, although Tsukamoto proves himself a good friend to Goto by giving a place to crash and not badgering him about things Goto obviously doesn't want to share with him. From this point onwards Dojima really starts putting the mental screws into Goto as their "game" starts to escalate.  Join me in a few days time for book three why don't you?

Old Boy Book 1 (NSFW)

NSFW:  Warning sex and bare boobies!

"Why didn't they just kill me?" - Goto Shinichi

So, this month I am just going to be looking at all eight volumes of the manga series, Old Boy. A series of volumes that tells one long unbroken and focused narrative, rather than a looser storyline split into arcs.  And I am betting that quite a few of you are thinking about the incredible Park Chan-wook 2003 South Korean film of the same name and going "they made a manga out of that? How interesting, yet redundant."  Yet it's more interesting and less redundant than that, smartarse. The manga came first and the film was a loose adaptation that took the initial elements of the first half of the manga and wove them together into a film that has quite a different outcome than how the manga develops.  So if you have seen the film, this should still be of interest because of how the two complement and diverge.  If you are at all interested in East Asian cinema and somehow haven't seen Old Boy, go watch it NOW then come back and read this.  It really is that good of a film and I'll be revisiting it in the final write-up of the series when I compare and contrast how the two versions finish the story.

Anyway, this is a Seinen manga, meaning it is aimed at adults, written by Garon Tsuchiya, drawn by Nobuaki Minegishi and translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian. It was originally serialised in Futabasha magazine and ran between 1996 and 1998.  It was published in the west in 2006 and 2007 by Dark Horse comics on the back of the success of the film and is made up of seventy nine chapters across eight collected volumes.  If I was going to assign it a genre, then I'd probably go with the description on the back of the books and call it a "Bare Knuckled Urban Thriller". That means it has realistic violence and lady breasts in it and no super-powered alien martial artists Kamehamehaing each other in the face. With all that out of the way, let us begin.

[Note:  This manga is "unflipped" so must be read from right to left, and the sound effects have been left in the original Japanese and subtitled instead]

Shinichi Goto.

Oh one more thing before I start, the main character's name.  It isn't actually revealed until the end of volume two as "Shinichi Goto", but writing round that is going to be a massive ache up the backpipe so I'm going to call him by his real name of Goto right from the start, though I shall note his alias's, reasons why he conceals his name and when it's finally revealed as I trot through the story.

The story begins with a new worker at a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo being given an order to take to the "usual building".  He's instructed to take the bosses elevator and press the buttons for floors 7 and 8 at the same time.  This will take him to the mysterious floor "7.5" where a row of cells are.  A guard takes the order from him and passes it through to the inmates.  And we are introduced to Goto, in a cell with just a bed, TV and toilet facilities for company. We get a glimpse of his typical day which is working out and listening to the TV as he does so.

Sexy boy.

Then three men come into his cell and tell him he is to be released.  They hand him a suit and we get a look at how powerfully muscular Goto is as he changes.  This surprised the main man, who says he's in great shape for someone who was locked up for ten years.

Goto: "Why?  Who the hell put me in this place?!!"

The main man laughs saying he doesn't know and that this place is their organisation's "cash cow."  A place where people can pay to have others put away for any length of time.  Goto wonders why he wasn't merely killed.  The main man shrugs and says not everyone can sleep easy after murder.

One of the others suddenly clamps a chloroform soaked cloth over Goto's face.  Goto flips the man over his shoulder and kicks the gun out of the other man's hand.  Before he can attack the main man, the drug kicks in and he passes out.  The men then dump him in a park and leave him with one thousand yen, before scarpering.  Goto wakes up and soaks in his new, moonlit freedom.

The moon is something of a recurring theme in the story.

He goes to a sushi bar and carefully orders a meal he can afford.  After eating it he is left with a couple of coins.  He wonders if he sould phone someone and start accessing his past.  But he realises no one would believe him, so he drops the coins in the pocket of a homeless drunk and walks off, thinking about how he's already thought of a way to start "fighting back."

He decides it's time to "try something out".  He passes a group of suspicious looking young men.  He staggers into them pretending to be drunk.  They try to rob him at knifepoint but he beats them down and knocks one out, the rest flee.  He checks the unconcious one for money and takes ten thousand yen from him and goes for his "first booze in ten years".

As he drinks and savours it, he remembers reports on the TV he saw about gangs of kids robbing "old men" (he's only thirty-five! Means I must be ancient.).  He also wanted to know if his body could handle a real fight.  Then a young woman who works in the bar comes up to him and says he's bleeding from a cut on his face and puts a plaster on it.

Goto drinks and broods on who and why he was locked up, when the bar closes he leaves and bumps into the young woman who invites him back to her place to stay the night.  Having not had sex for a decade Goto can't resist.  Back at her place they share a drink and she introduces herself as "Eri".  She asks his name and he tells her "circumstances have made me discard my past name".  So she decides to call him "mister" for now.

There's a rumpled sadness about Goto that is very appealing.

After a couple more beers, she appears to Goto in just a towel and pretty much begs him for sex.  Goto doesn't turn her down and they begin bonking.  He asks her if she has a condom, she says no but that today is a "safe day".  So Goto really goes for it enjoying it as it's been "ten years since warm, soft flesh".  As they lie in a post-coital glow, he reaches down and finds blood.

Eri: "Now I'm rid of it.  'Virginity' how depressing.  I'm so glad I could give it to someone like you."

Um... Eri you do know virgins can get pregnant, don't you?  Anyway, you might be forgiven for thinking how convinient it is that Goto meets a woman desperate to have sex with him on his first night of freedom.  Never fear, this is actually something that gets explained later in the story.

Meet Eri.  It's Ok, she's legal!

As they sleep, a thuggish looking bloke stands outside Eri's apartment complex and speaks on the phone to a man who is the person that had Goto locked up.  This mystery man's name is kept a secret until the end of the story, he goes by the alias "Dojima" which is revealed a bit later on, but again, I am going to refer to him as that from the start because it's easier to write up.

The story then follows Dojima as he remembers back to ten years ago.  He met a man who worked for the organisation who runs the lock-up who gives him the low down on the place.  Some people have others locked up, others have themselves locked up while on the run from the police.  It costs thirty-thousand yen per night with a sliding scale of discounts based on the length of time required.  When Dojima asks how much for ten years, the man is shocked and surprised.

"Dojima"

He goes and phones his bosses and comes back and tells Dojima it'll cost him three hundred million yen, abduction on the house if he pays it all upfront.  Dojima shakes on the deal and they chat some more.  Dojima is curious about where the place is, the man says that his organisation had a building constructed and fudged the building codes so it had a secret floor made.  The man also thinks closes this mega-deal might get him a big promotion within the organisation (which is obviously the Yakuza).  Dojima finishes his trip down memory lane and we return to Goto.

He is sleeping next to Eri, then they are woken by the alarm at four in the afternoon.  She doesn't go to work until six in the evening, but decides to take the night off so she can spend more time with Goto as she believes she won't see him again once they finally part.  So they have a night of fun, going to an arcade, a nightclub and funfair before ending up back at her flat.

Eri and Goto enjoy a night out.

Back at her place she asks him to tell her his story.  He tells her about being locked up and that he has no idea why.  Last thing he recalled was hitting some bars in Shinjuku before waking up in the cell.  The only food he was given was Chinese, and from the taste, came from the same restaurant the whole time he was there.  Eri asks what he thought about all that time. 

He says for the first three months he thought he was going insane.  But then he heard the man in the cell next door asking to be let out as he only asked to be put away for a week.  When Goto realised that, he had hope that one day he too would be released, "but hell.. ten years."  Eri hugs him, saying again she is glad she gave him her virginity and he smiles, but then reiterates how he wants to know who and why locked him up all that time.

A Yakuza hairdresser of all things.

Dojima is back in his luxury home and his butler brings him the phone and he speaks with the man he has stalking Goto.  Dojima wants the photos he's taken of Goto right now, he develop them himself.  Goto and Eri are still talking about his incarceration, Eri asks about his hair.  Goto says that once a month he was forced to cuff and blindfold himself so someone could come in and given him a trim.  Goto also had a revelation about the possible aim of his imprisonment.

Goto: "One day it hit me.  Did they want to change my personality?!  Was their goal to turn me into a different person, consumed by negative passions?!"

So he decided to become "stoic".  Building his muscles like a man in a bleak desert temple. He also clung to the television.  It became his "window onto the entire world."

Meanwhile Dojima develops and contemplates the pictures of Goto.  "He's still got that aura about him" he thinks:

Dojima: "Doesn't he give a damn about that ten year gap in his life?  Was this entire project just a waste?"

And scowling he burns the photos.  Meanwhile Goto and Eri spend another night together.  Eri aks what Goto will do now.  Goto admits that the media might find his tale a juicy one, but would soon forget about him.  He says that although he had a lover back then he has "no regrets or attachments" from that time.  He really just wants to confront the person who did this to him.

Removing the chip.

As he reaches down for a cigarette Eri notices a scar in his back.  Goto quickly realises he must have a tracking chip implanted in him, something he saw on TV that people were doing as a kidnapping countermeasure.  He asks if she can be brave and dig it out, and she reluctantly does so, pulling out a small GPS chip.  Eri then tells him she'd be happy to hear progress reports in his "war".

Eri: "'Cause if you don't tell someone your secrets, you're sure to burst."

He promises to do so and leaves.  He starts working on a building site and the site manager offers him a place to stay in the transient workers flophouse.  Goto tells him his name is "Yamashita".  Taking a break he regards the small chip in the palm of his hand.  He flashes back to the rest of his coversation with Eri about it.  He says he can use it to trick his enemies.  If he wants to do something secret he can leave the chip in one place while he is in another, "one point to me!"

Construction worker Goto.

Ask he works on the site, Dojima and his thug have a meal in a top floor restaurant in a nearby building and Dojima spies on Goto with binoculars.  Goto gets a strange feeling - "I'm sure my 'nemesis' is near this very moment."  At the flophouse a friendly fellow worker "Kassim" introduces himself to Goto and they share a meal.  As he lies in bed, Goto thinks on how he needs to build up a bit of cash before he can go searching for the lock-up.

Two weeks later he bumps into Eri again and they catch up.  Goto says it's time to find where he was held and they are going to do it by finding the restaurant he was fed from.  Eri says there must be tens of thousands of Chinese restaurants in Tokyo, but Goto says he has narrowed it down.  One day he found a scrap of a receipt in the bottom of his bowl of noodles and it had "Seiryu" (Blue Dragon) on it.  There are only eight restaurants with that name in Tokyo, so they go to the first one and order gyoza (delicious meat or veg filled dumplings).  He takes his first bite and the volume ends with his thoughtful expression.

The first dumpling based cliffhanger ever?

Well what a cracking first book.  It sets up an incredibly compelling mystery based around a really cool idea - a criminal run prison that can lock up the innocent for a price - and gives us a strong yet somewhat sad main character in Goto, who is likeable, but you're left wondering if he really did do something horrific in his past to deserve what happened to him and just why Dojima seems so obssessed with him even after his prison "term" was up. Eri is a sweet character who makes a good sounding board for Goto and his thoughts, and she'll remain important to the story right to the end.  Of course reading it fresh it does seem odd she gives herself so freely to Goto, but what strikes an weird note now, is actually a clue to events yet to transpire and is just another of the mysteries whirling in the vortex of the conflict between Goto and Dojima whose game of chess is really beginning  with Goto making the first move via his hunt for the restaurant and discovery of the tracking chip. The artwork is fantastic, very atmospheric and gives the events a real feeling of place and the dialogue allows the art to tell much of the story too, which doesn't happen often enough for my liking.  Join me in a few days for volume two why don't you?

The Punisher MAX Book 3: Mother Russia (#13-18)

"Win some. Lose some, General" - Nick Fury

After two books setting Frank Castle up as the Impacable Man, utterly and single-mindedly dedicated to his never-ending and unwinnable mission of wiping out crime in New York, it's time to see a slightly softer side to him by placing the defence of a child in his hands.  In this book he goes on a secret military mission to Russia and involves the only Marvel character outside of The Punisher's continuity to appear in the series, Nick Fury.  People who are more familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe might be surprised to see this Nick Fury isn't Samuel L. Jackson.  But in the main 616 Marvelverse, Fury is a white guy (for now).  Garth Ennis also wrote a MAX imprint thirteen part series about Nick Fury called "My War Gone By" and I shall be covering in the not to distant future.  Whether that Nick is the same as the one who crops up here I'm not sure, they both know and use Frank Castle for special missions and have similar tastes in women, but the Nick Fury of "My War Gone By" was very much a man of our history and disillusioned and broken by it, while this Nick Fury is still very much wanting and jockeying for an active role in the defence of America as head of S.H.I.E.L.D. This storyline also introduces a two new antagonists who'll crop up later in the series as well.

The story begins with The Punisher sitting having a sandwich in a Russian bar. An old Russian man is expressing his disillusioned frustration with his country now being a nation of gangsters.  And also that he's just finished the last bottle of decent homegrown vodka in the place.  The barman says he's stupid for speaking out the way he is, but the old man retorts he was in Leningrad during WW2 and isn't easily intimidated.

The TV is showing the release of a gangster called Leon Rastovich, which is the source of the old man's ire.  The barman throws him out, but after he does so, Frank smashes the barman's head into the counter and tells him the old man - Alexandr  Baranovich Formichenko - is "protected".  Outside Alexandr is being hassled by Rastovich's men but Frank lures them into an alley and when he gets Rastovich's location out of them, kills them all.

How rude, Mr. Fury.

The story then cuts to Nick Fury being told he can't smoke his trademark cigars on the plane he is on.  He takes no notice of course.  He tells the other man on the flight that he's been tasked with a mission by the US government and he is planning to use The Punisher for it and he's getting his attention the best way he knows how, especially after the clusterfuck that took place when the C.I.A tried to recruit him with disastrous consequences as chronicled in book one of the series.

Leon Rastovich is staying at his mother's house. The Punisher is scoping him out, wondering how a man convicted of multiple counts of murder and child prostitution could qualify for early release.  At the trial he rolled on everyone involved in his operation but his mother who was suspected of supplying the children he used from a Kazakhstan orphanage.  Frank then gets to work assaulting the heavily guarded house with guns, grenades and an inventive use of a gas oven.  As he stands and watches the house burn, Nick Fury comes up to him.

Nick Fury: "Never enough is it?"

He then tells Frank he arranged for Rastovich to be released early and he did so because he needed to find Frank fast.  They go and talk in a bar and Fury says he wants Frank for a job, "high risk.  Just about impossible.  You fuck up, no one's ever heard of you".  To convince Frank to take it on he gives him a file with user names and passwords to every criminal database in the country.

Fury courts Frank

Frank wonders who Fury is working for. The Army and Airforce right now, but if this job works out, he's hoping to get S.H.I.E.L.D back under his control.  Fury leaves and Frank ponders the fact that Nick is the only man on earth whose word he'd trust right now.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, a US agent called Rawlins is reporting to someone over the phone that his cell of terrorists are ready to hijack a plane in a suicide bombing attempt. When he hangs up we see who he'd been talking to.  Some very high up military brass in the US.  Who say now that Nick Fury and the "animal" he's using have no choice but to succeed.

On a plane that makes a unscheduled diversion to drop Frank off at the edge of Russia, he thinks back to his debriefing by Fury.  He's shown a tape with footage of Chechen prisoners strapped to tables being exposed to a biological agent nicknamed "Barbarossa".  They instantly turn into skeletons, all their flesh and organs consumed at once. 

Barbarossa in action.

The tape, with much of his research on it was given to a US general by a Russian scientist called Evengy Stenkov.  He was offered a new life in the US if he defected and he made a run for it with the only sample.  He nearly made it, but the Russian government caught him, not before he had injected the last sample into his daughter Galina. Who is protected from its effects by the antidote she also carries.

The Russian's started interrogating Evengy but he foiled them by dying of a massive heart attack ten minutes in.  Now the Russians have Galina and her blood but without the research on the tape, they are just "groping in the dark."  The agent will stay active in Galina's blood for the next 48 hours then the antidote will break it down completely.  So Frank, and the Delta Force soldier Martin Vanheim going with him will be tasked with getting Galina and then getting to an extraction point as quickly as possible.

Back in the present, having successfully arrived in Russia undetected, Frank reflects how Vanheim annoys him.  He stands out too much, he's a "walking action figure."  Back with Fury, he's being scolded for telling Frank all the classfied information about the virus.  Fury simply says that Frank needed to know all the stakes, oh and it's not a "sample" it's a "six year old little girl".  He then leaves and one of the men says "I really hate him".  One of the others says smugly that Fury doesn't know everything about "Barbarossa" nor do they know about Rawlins.  Fury's problem is that he "doesn't know his place."

Fiiiight!

In Russia, Frank and Vanaheim are drinking in a bar closest to the missile silo Galina is being held in.  Frank says they've already been noticed so time for "Plan B.  Start a fight".  A bar room brawl ensues, and one man starts getting the upper hand on Frank until he hits him in the throat with a bottle of vodka.  As the fight merrily continues, he and Vanheim slip out.  They kill two Russian soldiers outside and disguise themselves with their clothes, then drive into the base using their truck. 

They quietly take out the inner checkpoint and finally reach the base proper. As they suit up Frank reflects "that's everything you need to know to break into a nuclear missile base."  Meanwhile Rawlins waves off his suicide bombers at the airport then changes into a western suit of clothes and mutters "give my regards to Moscow" as he gets on a plane bound for the US.

The next chapter begins with a clearly distressed Galina in a lab hearing gunshots.  She tearfully asks if someone is doing tests and the female scientist with her yells that she needs to shut up, "or we'll do tests and tests and tests on you for the rest of your fucking life!"  Well she's not very nice.  Fortunately she gets murderised in the next panel.  Frank looms over Galina in the doorway.

Frank: "Galina Stenkov.  Don't be afraid."

Poor Galina.

We get a brief page looking at the US military monitoring the situation as well as "Rawlins' operation"  Then we're back with Frank and Galina.  She weepily asks why everyone is being so mean to her.  Frank thinks about the last time he talked to a kid, it was her daughter as she was dying.  But he steps up anyway, he introduces himself and then says:

Frank: "If anyone else tries to be mean to you, I'll be much meaner to them I promise."

This seems to calm her down.  He unhooks her from the machines she is attached to, then tells her to shut her eyes and not to open them until he tells her too.  He then carries her through a hallway full of dead Russian soldiers.

He joins up with Vanheim and they take the lift down. The door opens on a room with some soldiers lounging by a tank.  "Fuck!" exclaims Vanheim and opens fire on them, their fire is returned and they are forced to close the lift door and travel back up.  Angrily Frank rounds on Vanheim saying they could have just walked past them and "watch your language in front of the kid."

We're now introduced to the Russian response to the shenanigans relating to Evengy's attempted escape with his daughter.  A man call Semyon snootily looks down on the "fat old slug" sent from Moscow.  His friend though is horrified when he realises it's Nikolai Zakharov, the infamous "Man Of Stone" who did terrible things during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.  And he's also bought "the Mongolian" with him.

By the end, I was pulling for the war criminal.

Zakharov immediately pins the blame on the Americans so it's obvious Evengy didn't even reveal who he was giving the bio-agent to before he died.  He also asks if anything else untoward has happened recently and is told about the bar fight and the two missing men.  Zakharov wants to interview witnesses to the fight, Semyon assures him nothing serious has happened since Evengy's capture and death, just then a soldier bursts him and shouts about a firefight at the silo.  "Fuck" says Semyon.

Frank, Vanaheim and Galina backtrack and Frank picks up some heavy ordinance.  Leaving Galina with Vanaheim he travels back down in the life and opens fire on the soldiers that have poured into the hangar with an anti-aircraft gun, which when used on humans turns them into "paint".  He finishes up by hurling aload of plastic explosive at the leftover men as the commanders call frantically for outside back-up.

I always learn something new about guns in a Garth Ennis story.

Zakharov questions one of the bar fighters and ascertains that the men who started it were white.  Meanwhile, Nick Fury in bed with three prostitutes (!) gets a call from the US military informing him of the firefight in the silo.  He is unconcerned and rolls over back to sleep, saying "HHH, Castle" as he does so.

Unable to use mass explosives to winkle Frank out without killing Galina too, the Russians send commandos down the lift shaft.  However Frank has rigged them with wires and explosives to surprise the first wave.  Vanaheim is trying to figure out a way to escape, he says maybe they should blow the whole area they are in up and hope the Russians don't notice two missing bodies.  That won't work because of Galina says Frank, find a better plan.  Then he goes back to the bottom of the shaft and fires at the soldiers as they keep sending men down.

Zakharov questions one of the survivors of the first firefight, who confirms that the man he saw (Frank) was white.  Semyon sneers that the American "theory" doesn't seem to be going away, and does it matter anyway?  Zakharov says that Islamic terrorists would have set off the nukes and blown them all sky high by now, but "these are men who want to live" and that the Americans are the most cunning enemies the Russians ever faced and shouldn't be underestimated.  Then he says his colleague, the Mongolian will be joining the next wave of attackers.

Skyjacked.

Onboard the flight to Moscow the terrorists hijack the plane and a passenger revolt is quickly quelled.  Back in the silo, Frank is still kill men as they descend, hope their stomach for a fight runs out before his ammo does.  One of the men he killed however had a special package with him, concealed in his backpack is the diminutive Mongolian.

Meanwhile the US military command has called Fury in to yell at him some more about what's going on in the silo.  He tells them to "act your fucking rank for a minute".  Frank and Vanaheim are totally deniable if the worst happens.  But the worst won't happen, Frank will get them all out and that's that.  And the next time they call him in, make sure it's important, "the women I like charge by the hour".  Oh Nick, you rogue.

The blood soaked Mongolian rushes Vanheim and kicks him in the face.  In a blur of movement he incapacitates but doesn't kill him.  Horrified Galina calls for Frank.  The US are monitoring Rawlin's pet terrorists, noting they are doing everything he told them to.  The Russian's in turn are readying their missile batteries.  The terrorists start preaching Jihad against the Russians over the radio and the man monitoring the Russians in the US says the commander of the nearest missile battery just got the order to fire.

Does Frank know kung fu? No.

Frank comes back to find Galina being threatened by the Mongolian, so he puts his guns down and prepares for mortal combat.  The Mongolian quickly beats him almost unconcious.  Zakharov says it's been seventeen minutes so the Mongolian should be done and he wants the prisoners sent to him.

Zakharov: "After all these years, the Cold War could be turning hot."

The Russians blow the hijacked airliner out of the sky before it can be crashed into Moscow.  Semyon and Zakharov are informed of this event and it's confirmed it was a Saudi airliner.  Zakharov is dubious about it being Al Qaeda, and Semyon finally snaps and says to his friend Grigori:

Semyon: "This legend of yours is now going to tell us how a gang of suicidal Arabs were actually Americans in disguise... That's what I call method fucking acting!"

Zakharov just calmly responds that Americans are inventive people who would go to such lengths "to throw us off the scent."  This is why he wanted Frank and Vanaheim alive.

Horrifying and kind of funny as well.

The pair are in bad shape.  Frank blearily thinks that he's failed Galina.  Then the Mongolian slaps her hard and knocks her down and Frank flashes back to the death of his daughter.  And like any good hero in a shonen anime this powers him back up and into battle again.  When the Mongolian tries to kick him again, he grabs his foot and swings him round smashing him repeatedly into the floor.

Frank: "I'm twisting his leg off like a drumstick when I realise I'm frightening the kid."

When it's over she runs to him and hugs his leg, which is pretty sweet.  Then we visit the US military command celebrating the airliner being shot down.  Fury then storms in.

Fury: "What the fuck did you assholes just do?"

Frank tools up and tells Galina she doesn't need to worry any more.  She picks up a pistol and asks if he wants her to help.  Frank takes it off her and says she must never play with guns.  He hides her under a desk and braces her with his and Vanaheims parachute packs, then tells her to cover her ears.  He then leaps out and shoots the shit out of the soldiers creeping up on their position.

Back with Fury, he is told that the airliner was part of an attempt to deflect blame over the recovery of the girl.  After 9/11 they got the idea of covertly raising and funding a cell of Muslim extremists who they could use to take out targets in friendly countries.  They had a deep cover operative in place, after that it was a matter of picking the flight and setting things in motion.

Fury makes his feelings clear.

Fury coldly asks whose idea it was, and everyone looks at one of the generals.  Fury takes off his belt and beats the man over and over, saying it was pretty harsh on all the passengers in the airliner, and also that anyone looking too hard could probably see something was up, and if Castle doesn't get out of the silo, they could be in huge trouble and he is "all out of ideas".

Frank returns to find Vanaheim trying to inject something in a struggling Galina.  Castle smashes his head into the wall as Vanheim stammers he has "orders".

Frank: "Tell me!"

Vanheim: "Secondary protocol.  Kill the kid and bring her blood out."

One syringe contains a stabiliser for the retrovirus, but has the side effect of killing her.  It was thought that it would be easier for them to get out with a vial of blood than with a child.  Fury didn't know, it was why the Generals were so insistent he come along with Frank.

Frank gives him hard stare as he comments that Delta Force are the "best of the best".  Vanheim has the decency to look ashamed.  Frank decides he still needs him and tells him to fire up the nukes and change the targets to all major Russian cities.  Frank then dictates terms: The Russian military withdraw from the base and allow them safe passage to the mountains with no surveillance or "I will burn Russia and its people from the face of the Earth."

Time to leave.

The US are also monitoring events and start yelling at Fury, again.  "All of you shut the fuck up" says Fury.  Thanks Nick.  Meanwhile, Frank, Galina and Vanaheim make prepare their getaway from the silo.  The missiles are set to do their thing in twelve minutes.  Frank says he's trying the one thing no has yet:

Frank: "I'm gambling that the Russians aren't stupid."

Semyon is also losing his shit by this point as the missile countdown continues.  He pleads with Zakharov to agree to the "terrorist's" demands.  Zaharov refuses, and tells him to wait.  The missile launches aimed at Moscow, and Fury suddenly realises what Frank's plan is.  Zakharov tells Semyon the Americans ARE behind it, but if he tells Moscow this it will mean the end of the world, "so we do nothing."

Semyon screams at him, saying that Arab terrorists have fired a nuke at Moscow and he is damn well going to tell them.  Zakharov shoots him in the face before he can use the phone.  Then the person monitoring the missile says it cut out at eight thousand feet high, the warhead deactivated and it's just a "harmless steel tube now".  It'll come down about ten miles away. 

Zakharov: "Our opponent is a man of extremes.  But he is not the type to murder millions.  No more than I am in the end... That was no American.  It was a Russian born in there by mistake."

And the final part of Frank's plan is revealed, out of the missile parachute Frank with Galina strapped to his chest and Vanaheim.  They make it to the ground safely but Vanaheim lost his pack in the descent and they only have one coat between them.  They draw straws for who gets it, and Frank gets to take a wrapped up Galina to the Navy SEAL drop point ten miles away and Vanaheim gets to freeze to death.  Shame.

An inventive getaway.

Nick Fury greets Frank and Galina as they arrive in the US a couple of days later.  Then the yelling starts again.  Seems Frank stood guard over Galina the whole journey and refused to let anyone take her blood and now the retrovirus is destroyed.  Fury asks if this is true.  "Promised I wouldn't let anyone hurt her" says Frank.  Fair enough shrugs Fury.  When the raging asshole General orders Frank arrested, Fury stares the soldiers down and they refuse. As the General shrieks at them for disobeying orders, Fury, Frank and Galina walk away.

Frank: "Doesn't seem to bother you much the virus being destroyed.  'Matter of fact, a suspicious man might think you set the whole thing up just to pull Galina out of that hole."

Fury says he might think so too, seeing as he sent the one man he could think of who would never, ever hurt a kid.  He would have gone but he was supposed to be keeping an eye on the Generals, "not that I did a good job of it."  Also they'll have changed the passwords he promised Frank, so "nobody wins".  Frank doesn't seem too bothered.

He tells Galina to go with Nick and that he'll make sure no one hurts her.  She wants to stay with Frank and begs him not to leave her.  Frank regards her sadly:

Frank: "I can't Galina.  I can't look after anyone."

Ennis plays my heartstrings like a banjo.

And she tearfully parts from him after promising never to play with guns.  Frank sleeps the trip off then winds up back in the Russian bar he was in at the start of the book.  And what do you know?  He still has the bottle of the good vodka that saved his life in the bar fight.  He hands it to the bartender who pours some out for the grumpy Russian man.  Who is made very happy by this, "maybe there is hope for the Motherland after all".

And there it ends.  It does feel more like we are seeing Frank Castle, soldier rather than Frank Castle "The Punisher" in this book.  Even if he does rack up the same almost ludicrous body count as the story progresses,  it's still a compelling read and it's fascinating how Nick Fury and Zakharov, both creatures of the Cold War, are contrasted with the more modern (and somewhat squalid) Commanders of the War On Terror.  Putting Frank in charge of the safety of a child provides the first "humanising" glances into his soul we have been given since the series began, and he also makes an interesting contrast with the younger man "just following orders" and willing to kill a child for the sake of his military generals.  I've haven't mentioned much about the art by Dougie Braithwaite because it keeps to the muted, "realistic" look of the two previous volumes, and is someone hamstrung by the tyranny of the widescreen panel fad that plagued comics in the first half of the noughties. Luckily the script more than makes up for this and in the context of the series as a whole it's it goes on to have huge ramifications and the awesome depiction of Nick Fury and seeing the softer side of Frank means it's well worth a look.