by Naked Ape (Saki Otoh and Nakamura Tomomi), 174 pages
Kai Eto, a rookie investigator for the Greater Kanto Narcotics Control Division, is normally a sweet kid, but when situations go south, he slips into a darker part of his personality that springs from his shadowy, unpleasant past. With his cool-tempered, serious partner Hal Kurabayashi, Kai tracks down and takes down those who would make a profit off of society's addictions.
In this volume, a snitch turns out to be playing the system in order to help out a new drug ring by conveniently squealing on the competition. There are also some flashback stories involving a few of the other investigators from when they, too, were rookies.
Please ignore the gosh awful cover art on this volume. Gah! I swear it doesn't look like that on the inside. That said, however, I must admit that while I keep reading this series because I generally like the stories, my eyes and brain go a bit fuzzy by the time I get to the end of one because it's nearly impossible to keep the many, too-similar, too-inconsistently depicted characters straight. Even the flashbacks are not clearly marked as such, so it takes a few pages to figure out a.) who the people are and b.) that it's old news to them. There's not enough variation in the thickness of the line work and there's too much black overall, making everything really high-contrast and stark, which limits helpful details and makes my eyes tired. The creators also don't give any kind of help with names and roles to put with faces at the beginning of volumes or storylines (although they do toss in an occasional label box in the flash backs). When you have months in between books, you might need a refresher now and then! Despite my whinging, the plots are interesting and the characters' back stories are relevant to the present goings-on in appropriately sinister ways, so I'm sure I'll still pick up the next one and see if Kai and Hal and the gang get any closer to the true source of their biggest problems.
