A Decent First Movement

 

Seven-year-old Chloe lives alone with her baby brother Locke in another world’s prison city.  Police robots stop any who try to escape.  Their parents have been gone for six months, and neither child has ever left their apartment.  To keep them both occupied and emotionally safe, Chloe often sings and dances.

 

But even the tightest and hardest of prisons requires repairs, and three hardened former criminals are just the ones to do it.  Plus, this gives them insight into the vulnerabilities of the prison as they plan their escape.  Their leader is torn, though, between escaping to find his daughter and not, as he is the one keeping Chloe and Locke basically alive via donations of food left outside their door.

 

The day of the escape comes, and Chloe and Locke (who somehow learned of their plan) follow after them.  A fight with prison security ensues and Locke is unfortunately dropped and abandoned, with no guarantee that he survived.

 

Flash forward to 11 years later, where Chloe has returned, trained by the criminals, to the prison city in search of Locke.  There she must deal with street violence and criminal families to find the information she needs.

 

This is Shiro Moriya’s “Soloist In A Cage”.

 

As you could probably tell, this is a manga with a Western bent, to the point where I am not entirely sure this manga even came from Japan.  The art style is also very Western, leaning more into the old-timey comics of premiere Batman and stuff like Prohibition.  There are no cheesy attack names or fanservice in Soloist In A Cage, and only scant amounts of humor.  Battles are done with common knives and handguns for the most part.  Things are somber, with sumptuously detailed art, everyone dealing with some sort of loss, and silent fights with well-choreographed knife work.

 

It is both sad and beautiful to see Chloe’s childhood dancing skills repurposed into graceful and deliberate swings of a knife.

 

Sadly, this manga did not turn out to be my cup of tea.  There is a time and place for sadness and melancholy, don’t get me wrong.  But I am not sure if I really liked Soloist In A Cage.  It all felt a little too Western for my tastes.  In fact, let me check…It does say online that it’s being put out by Shueisha and Shonen Jump+.

 

But I still find the juxtaposition and contrast of the Western art style and names with its country of origin in Japan to be disconcerting.