Manga Review: Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest

Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest, also known as Emblem of the Wolf and Ookami no Monshou is a Japanese Manga created by the author Tabata Yoshiaki also known for his famous work "Akumetsu", which I have also already reviewed. It runs in the Japanese Magazine "Young Champion" and first began publication in the year 2007 and is still ongoing today with 8 volumes so far in total. This manga is actually a modern adaption of the manga "Wolf Guy" created by sakaguichi Hisash which was first published in the year 1970 with 2 volumes in total.

Ms. Aoshika is not only divorced, but an underappreciated teacher at her job. But one drunken mishap leads her to witness firsthand the brutal assault and murder of a young man. However, after fainting, she awakens to discover that all of the assailants have been seriously wounded. And to her further surprise, the next day she discovers that not only is the young man, Akira, she met the night before alive, but he is now her new transfer student. Her life will never become the same again as she watches the young man slowly gets in trouble with the schools problematic gangs and youths.

Okey so we have this guy who is a 100% genuine Werewolf and he moves around highschools because he always ends up wrecking peoples lives. This highschool seems like all the same except for one reason, theres a teacher Ms. Aoshika who he finds himself drawn to. Except he likes to live his whole life in solitude, however the schools gang and the feared yakuza boss son Haguro decide to tip his world upside down. However when they find out hes pretty much immortal to all known weapons and firearms they just decide to hurt all the people around him forcing Inugami into a permanent emo state until he finds his true calling in life. The manga currently at the moment isn't anything amazing really, bu the manga is still young and has yet to fully develop into it's future awesome state.

Akira Inugami: How long has he lived? who knows, who is his parents? he doesn't even know, all we know is that he is the main protagonist, and heres a werewolf. He constantly lives his life moving from one place to the next trying to get an education but he always has this problem. And that is he constantly looks down upon humanity as a whole a pity's them because they are so weak. He pitys them so much then every time he encountered an attacker he would let them beat him up, and would never fight back, ever. The reason for not fighting back? this is because he cannot be defeated by mere mortal hands, he has no worry in the world and no care for humans, and thus all the thugs and criminals hate him for it.

Ms. Aoshika: Her bust size, just look how huge they are, anyway where were we? she is the home school teacher for the class that Inugami is in. It was not the first time she has met him, she met him previously when a gang was about to rape her and Inugami stepped in and killed them all. She finds Inugami mysterious and constantly tries to get closer to him to find out his problems. However because of her bust size she always gets into trouble. She was raped as a teenager, almost gang raped, and was half way through being raped as a teacher. Her caring and never-knowing-when-the-hell-to-just-leave-me-alone attitude is whats starts to make Inugami rethink his opinion on humanity as a whole.

Haguro: He is the son of a feared Yakuza Boss and becomes of his fathers presence nobody touches him. However he has no "daddy problems" nor does he depend on him for anything. He is proberbly more feared then his father himself because he is a beast in human skin. He will not hesitate to mutilate, torture, rape and kill you if you get in his way, or even look at him wierdly. He is easily the most evil human in the seris and the arch enemy of Inugami even though whenever they fight Haguro is the one wearing himself out dishing out the constant attacks. He wishes to achieve a power of inner being to try and combat Inugami because he needs all the help he can get when fighting with a werewolf.

Not suprisingly since this manga was created by the same author of Akumetsa that the quality of the manga art is pretty damn awesome. Quite alot of the manga is featured at night time because that is the only time Inugami can transform freely into his werewolf form. And even at night time the art quality is truly superb with the amount of different black shades he will use to construct the backgrounds and form the details. Backgrounds are drawn in fully and not just simply left out as the quality is so high it creates a perfect setting for whatever situation is going on. Even the characters expressions and motions are all drawn really well so you can really capture a sense of the movement within the scenes that are unfolding.

You see about halfway through the manga there was kind of a cross roads. Before this point the manga was pretty sub-par, medicore if you will with it's action and limited gore. But then after this point from no return the manga took a head dive and became much more violent and more hardcore in their sex scenes. The violence shifted from levels of not mere battle wounds but to mutilation and torture, but nothing that gory. No the real reason to bring this up is because sex scenes became much more frequent within the second half of the chapter. And this was all pretty much directed with Haguro and his girl, whos name escapes me at the moment. Well anyway this girl is pretty much a nymphomaniac who only likes to have sex who are powerfull because all the men she has previously has sex with have lost the will to live.

There are not quite alot of manga's out there that feature the main character as a wolf, and it isn't really a story where there are multiple characters as wolfs, he is pretty much the one. No this manga is a story about how this werewolf Inugami interacts with humans, it isnt like he is unknown to them, he has watched them for years, it is how he deals with them that makes this manga an okey read. But as I said at the moment the plot still seems to be in the beggining stages and nothing big has really been announced yet, which worrys me a little because this manga did start in 2007 and with a few years under it's belt it should be head on the way into a major arc or somthing. Regardless it is an okey manga to read to pass the time.