O-Taku Manga Lounge,Japan Foundation
EVOL Episode 1
Directed by Santa Yamagishi
Director
Santa Yamagishi
Writer
Eiichi Davis Mizoi, Atsushi Kaneko
Cast
Yuzu Aoki, Misaki Hattori, Himena Irei
contact
DMM TV
Following suicide attempts that really should have succeeded, three teenagers meet during an institutional therapy session for survivors. Akari, daughter of the city’s chief of police chief, and Nozomi, son of a single mom, are sullen, black-clad misfits, while cheerleader Sakura’s assertive facade hides the shame and anxiety of a racial outsider. As they get to know each other, each reveals that ever since their fateful failures, they’ve acquired superpowers. Their paranormal abilities are quirky, and rather modest—uncool, in fact.
Fusing the styles and elements of Japanese, European, and American comic books, Atsushi Kaneko is a manga artist who’s just starting to get a reputation in North America. Much of his work, including the brilliant, blood-streaked DEATHCO, has already been translated in to French, but only this summer is his series SEARCH AND DESTROY, a dysto-punk retelling of Osamu Tezuka’s classic DORORO, seeing an English edition. EVOL, his most recent manga series, digs deep and hard into the dark-superhero setting, cranking the teen angst to a searing intensity and shining a harsh light on matters more often ignored in Japanese pop entertainment—virulent racism, vicious homophobia, sexual violence. Transforming EVOL into a live-action miniseries for the streaming platform DMM TV was a brave move, and director Santa Yamagishi and company retain the manga’s ferocious, defiant energy. Shocking, wild, and weird, riddled with sharp humour and bruised but resilient compassion, the EVOL miniseries makes its debut beyond Japan’s borders when Fantasia presents the first three episodes of six. – Rupert Bottenberg
Showings
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