The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Watch Dogs Tokyo

What's It About? 

When the Tokyo Metropolitan Government applies a new, futuristic urban infrastructure management system called J-ctOS, it appears to be an instant success. Citizens' lives are quickly improved thanks to the ease of interconnectivity and convenience. However, all is not as it seems; while everything may appear to be going well, there are secrets lurking behind Blume Japan, the creator of J-ctOS.

Inspector Goda Gordon is a dedicated, honorable policeman who believes in justice above all — a mindset that is harder and harder to hold onto as his investigations continue to hit dead ends. After some off-the-books sleuthing, he comes to understand the grip that J-ctOS has on every aspect of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, including its police department. Soon, he realizes that his only option to fight the injustice and corruption in his city may lie in the hands of a group of vigilante hackers known as DEDSEC.

Watch Dogs Tokyo has a story by Seiichi Shirato and art by Shuuhei Kamo (Illustrator). English translation by David Bove and lettered by Vibrraant Publishing Studio. Published by TokyoPop. (April 30)

Is It Worth Reading?

Spun off from the Ubisoft action/adventure game franchise Watch Dogs; this is mostly accessible to those who haven't played it. I can say this because I am one of those people, and while there's a bit of a barrier to entry, it doesn't take long to get past it. In no small part, that's because this is the sort of science fiction that hits close to home: a particular type of software called ctOS has changed how infrastructure and surveillance are handled. Political organizations are more than happy to use it for their purposes, privacy rights be damned. (A reference to Harry Harrison's sci-fi caper series, The Stainless Steel Rat feels well placed.) In the manga's world, the use of J-ctOS by the Blume group has turned Japan into much more of a surveillance state than some people are comfortable with (and Blume isn't comfortable with police looking into their use of said software), leading to the hacktivist group DEDSEC showing up in Japan to help with the problem. When straight-arrow cop Goda stumbles onto their existence, he finds himself much more aligned with DEDSEC than the Tokyo government.

It's the sort of action-adventure that it's easy to get behind. There are clear good guys and bad guys and a bunch of grey guys floating around in the middle, and there's something very appealing about seeing big, bad, corrupt entities get taken out or at least made very uncomfortable. There are some easy visual shortcuts to understanding the level of tech in the story's world, even if one opening scene relies on 1990s-era download speeds to build tension. Holograms and video cameras are everywhere, and Goda has what looks like a small microchip implant by his ear, implying that he's somehow enhanced, cyborg-style. The art is uniformly busy, which is a mixed blessing; we get the idea of how visually noisy this Tokyo is, but it can also be very overwhelming to parse. It's the kind of artwork that could give you a headache if you aren't careful.

The text can also be a lot. That's not in terms of plot, but rather the use of jargon and some interesting translation choices; the word “mook” is almost comically overused by character S.S.B., and there are so many jumbles of letters thrown around that it starts to feel like no one uses full words anymore. (Except, of course, “mook.”) Goda's also a little hard to get a handle on as a character, and it feels like the story is much more impressed with his judo credentials than the plot merits, although that could change going forward. This will probably be more fun if you are familiar with the game series because many of these issues may require foreknowledge. If you're a game fan, I'd be more inclined to recommend it; it's readable if you're not, but almost certainly not much beyond that.

You don't need to have played Watch Dogs, the video game franchise on which Watch Dogs Tokyo is based, to enjoy this manga. It's easy enough to grasp the idea: a cyberpunk future in which hackers fight back against the surveillance state. Dystopias are a dime a dozen, but this one looks super cool thanks to its strong sense of style, which takes inspiration from such disparate sources as retro video games and Kabuki theater.

Blame the video game franchise for the word salad in the world-building sections. The hackers are part of a coalition called DedSec, and CTOS (called J-CTOS here) is the evil Blume Corporation's all-seeing digital information tool. Beyond the video games, there's another obvious inspiration at play: mid-century science fiction novels. The Blume Corporation's aspiration to catch criminals before crimes are committed is straight out of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. Later in the manga, protagonist Goda refers to The Stainless Steel Rat, a sci-fi series from the '50s. These pulp classics hang heavy over this story, in which two people from very different backgrounds: Goda, a cop turned freedom fighter, and an unnamed female hacker with a flair for drama, team up to expose the truth about J-CTOS. Even as they fight against the surveillance state, they make use of it, hacking security cameras, cutting off media feeds, and gathering top-secret data, in between kicking lots of ass. These activities are similar to the gameplay in Watch Dogs.

The coolest part of the manga's look is the characters' infiltration costumes; they wear Kabuki makeup to fool the security cameras and demon masks to conceal their identities from other humans. The female hacker (she refuses to give her name, fitting for a person fighting against the surveillance state) has an outfit straight out of The Matrix. It's a great-looking manga with detailed backgrounds that bring the futuristic setting to life. It's like a fun action flick, albeit one you've probably seen before: scrappy underdogs taking on the world when it didn't seem like they had a chance. As cool as this manga looks, it remains derivative of its literary and ludic inspirations without offering much originality.