Review by Ian Keogh

Legalising all drugs in Japan hasn’t solved a problem, just created a new one. There are now substances that transform users into all kinds of monsters or give them powers, depending on what they’ve taken, the resulting victims referred to as Dopemen by the police. In order to deal with them we have the officers of the Narcotics Control Bureau, four model perfect specimens who snort their own concoctions before diving into the threats.

Tojima is pictured on Yuhey Ogino’s sample art, a resolute and self-righteous stick in a trenchcoat spouting hypocritical platitudes as he sets about drug abusers with a vengeance. It’s all too easy to assume the exaggerations writer Ryo Yoshigami supplies are cartoon stand-ins, as there’s no concern for the addicted here, who’re punchbags, no matter their condition. When it comes to slightly tougher opposition Tojima’s tactics are the same: rush in headlong and set about the perps.

Everything is drawn by Ogino as a constant swirl of action with storytelling a secondary concern behind the overall effect of an individual panel. You can spend infinity on some pages trying to work out what’s going on behind the sound effects and explosions. When Ogino calms down a little he produces slick action and deft portraits.

If readers might consider Tojima troublesome, imagine what it’s like having to work with him. We’re not told what happened to his last partner, but his new companion Matrix has no rookie restraint about calling him out on his bullshit.

A second story occupies the second half and it’s even further drenched in the atmosphere of sordid male power fantasies with medical experimentation on beautiful women in a psychiatric hospital. It’s continued in Dopeman Vol. 2.

Dopeman panders to the worst instincts and desires of the Andrew Tate generation of teenage boys and seems utterly irredeemable.