Blood Blockade Battlefront Volume 1

It's been a while since I finished Yasuhiro Nightow's other work, Trigun Maximum, and I've been dying for something new. This thing right here fulfilled all of my expectations and then some. The setting is Jerusalem's Lot, a newly built version of New York City where demons, monsters, humans and anything and everything inbetween just sort of coexists casually. It reminded me a bit of that animated series "Ugly Americans", though the art in this is definitely more abstract and twisted thanks to Nightow's wonderful eye for the best details. The main character is Leonard "Watchman Leo" Watch, who's seemingly the most normal kid in the city. He's a journalist, photographer and pizza boy, who also happens to have the eyes of God and can see things no one else can. Then he runs into this crude cigar-smoking, flaming blood blade-wielding badass named Zap and his friends at the secret "Libra" organization. They're a band of agents that try to keep a level of order the city, led by Klaus the gentleman brawling vampire, and featuring his mummy butler and a meanspirited female werewolf called Chain who Zap totally wants to nail. The characters are all set up to be interesting, and as the volume goes on you want to know more about them. After 16 or so volumes of Trigun, Nightow has really found his style as a manga artist and author. A lot of things he writes and draws are weird on the surface and come across as a mixture of violent 80's Americana and head-scratching Japanese weirdness, with it all having the underlying fundamentals of what good art and writing are. It's this off-beat delivery of his that draws me in, but pushes some away. Nightow doesn't create manga like your average author, his style is different from average Japanese or American fiction in nearly every way. Love him or hate him, you can't really find anyone else like him, and if what he does clicks with you, you'll love it. The art and panels are very well composed, and this is one of the few manga where you have to really look at the pictures to understand what's going on in some scenes. Nightow is very much a "show and not tell" kind of manga author, using speech bubbles only for basic exposition and dialogue instead of having a character or side note dictate what's happening. Panel composition makes many scenes feel cinematic through use of dynamic angles and shadows, but it almost always feels clean. Words don't really appear while action is going on, leaving the reader with nothing to look at but the action itself. It's all very much par for the course for anyone who's read through Trigun. Dark Horse's ill-advertised release is welcomed with open arms, despite a few basic issues. Personally, I'm not a fan of the English title or logo that was chosen. The title simply doesn't roll off the tongue (though it's shortened as "B3") and the yellow-bordered comic-style blocky font doesn't suit the rest of the art style at all, in my opinion. The summary on the back of the volume and the chapter titles don't quite match up with the translations in the actual book parts("Jerusalem's Lot" is referred to as "New Jerusalem" in the back cover, for example. It doesn't really matter, but it also seems like basic quality assurance stuff that should've been noticed very easily. Dark Horse also included many micro-text translations of the various sound effects, which is nice since that was one of the bigger laws with their Trigun and Hellsing releases, but they're just sort of pasted on the panels and stick out a little. They also chose to leave some of the large kanji in the panels unedited, and put similarly tiny translations underneath the big chunks of Japanese text. Small aesthetic issues aside, the actual translation of the manga itself is nicely done and a little less awkward than Trigun before it. Honestly, I can't recommend this enough to anyone wants a fun and interesting new manga experience, or anyone that loved Trigun and wants something similar.

Honestly I just bought this b/c it is made by the man who brought us Trigun and Gungrave, Yasuhiro Nightow. He is one of the most talented and unique manga artists I've ever seen and he clearly loves what he does and loves his characters, b/c his work is nothing but fun. I wasn't sure what to expect with this strange title(Blood Blockade Battlefront, wtf?), but it blew me away. B3 is a story of Jerusalems Lot, a paranormal infested city once known as...NEW YORK! (As an American, Nightow has always brought us manga I can relate to. Trigun was basically a western, and now this is in New York, gotta love it.)This kid with powers stumbles into a group of people with powers and maximum action ensues. Just buy it, we gotta support print manga, and you might as well support the best.

It's not as compelling as Trigun or Gungrave but I expect it will get better. I've only read the first one. Fairly unique premise. Artwork is pure Nightow.

I recently watched the anime and I had to buy the Manga. This series is very interesting and hilarious! The characters are amazing, and the fact that this author created one of my all time favorite anime and manga (Trigun) I had to buy the manga. The package itself was delivered really fast, and overall I'm really happy with this purchase.

Another great manga from Yasuhiro Nightow. I'm hooked and cant wait for the other volumes to come out.

As per typical Dark Horse style, the spine of Volume 1 is a different style than all of the other spines.

Unlike Nightow's previous series, Trigun, I couldn't really get into the story and the art seemed a bit messy so it was hard to tell what was going on. The main character seemed pathetic and the eye power thing was weird. I dunno. I wish that the main character was the guy on the front but just wishful thinking. I know everyone loved the new Jerusalem idea and monsters popping everywhere but to me, it just seemed boring and cliched. Maybe I was hoping for another 'Trigun' since it was classified under sci-fi, I dunno. Anyway, displeasure aside, I give this book a 3 out of 5.

just what i wanted from it

Book arrived earlier than anticipated in good condition, very happy with this purchase and my son was over the moon with the book.

Já conhecia a história pela animação e fiquei feliz com a qualidade do mangá. Fisicamente chegou em perfeito estado. Superou minhas expectativas. A história envolvente, gosto muito do senso de humor dos personagens, apesar do universo apocalíptico que se passa, tudo é bem explicado e fica fácil de entender ao longo da leitura. Recomendo muito para fãs do gênero.

Excelente

Came as shown and good quality, my friend loved it!

love the anime and the manga