Cagaster vol. 1, by Hashimoto Kachou is a shonen manga that ran between 2005 and 2013, and has recently been adapted into an anime series for Netflix by beloved studio Gonzo. Ablaze manga is publishing it in a six volumes collection

The year is 2125, 30 years after a war, and the start of a pandemic turning one in a thousand citizens into a bug monster. Two thirds of the world population fell victim to the mutated humans, with no cure being found. The bugs are then declared not human, and their killing as soon as the transformation begins is allowed without it being categorized as murder. A new craft then appears: the exterminators. Some are in it for sadism and/or easy money, others, especially from the Far East, have other motivations.

This is a setup for yet another post apocalyptic series about monsters, those who hunt them, and the big mystery at the center of it all. The setting is in the frontier Western post apocalypse genre. Don’t expect anything original there.

Our main character is Kidow, mercenary exterminator, and basically your standard shonen protagonist: A dark stoic, brooding misunderstood character, whose past and motivations are kept secret from the reader at first. At the beginning of the story, he stumbles onto the aftermath of a bug massacre, and accepts the request from a dying man to bring his daughter Ilie back to a mother she thought dead.

The art is rather crude and dated, even for 2005. There isn’t much detailing, and the artist saves time on backgrounds, up to the point of keeping them totally blank during some back and forth dialogue. Actions sequences are difficult to follow, due to weird choices in paneling and huge original Japanese sound effects pasted all over the pages, with no flow logic whatsoever to guide the reader in his reading of the scenes.

This first volume mostly serves to introduce the settings and the characters. Ilie decides to make a life for herself, and adjust to her new town surroundings while fighting her feelings of loneliness, and trying to understand Kidow.

Along the way, Kidow gets involved in a murder investigation, killings made by humans and not bugs, and we discover similar cases have already been happening, all victims being exterminators. Could the shadowy figure appearing here and there be responsible ? Are they alone or part of a group ? Is this about revenge or something else entirely.

While being a good quick read, Cagaster doesn’t add much to the genre. I haven’t watched the anime adaptation, but it being a 2020 Netflix production and being 12 episodes, it probably improves on the art and tightens the story. However, it only gets a 6.1 on IMDb, which makes me think it remains a forgettable addition to the shonen genre whatever the media.

Thanks to Ablaze Manga, Diamond Books and Netgalley for the arc provided in exchange for this unbiased review.