Review by Karl Verhoven

The short description of Geniearth is that it’s a manga version of the X-Men, although without the costumes. A long-winded introductory sequence spotlights the equivalent of a mutant, here described as geniearths, which is a frankly bizarre label for anyone to apply to themselves.

If the labelling seems preposterous, the threats aren’t. Rensuke Oshikiri’s menu is one of sadistic violence gratuitously applied. The specimen seen on the sample art is remorseless school bully Genpachi Taira, who relishes his self-appointed trade of ridding the school of the weak, a breed he despises with a single-minded intensity that affects those around him. On the basis of this opening volume it applies to Oshikiri also, as the bullying is depicted in gruelling detail. “Even after Shin dies we’ll make sure his mother follows” bellows one attacker as they severely beat someone we’ve already seen targeted over several pages. Before the school scene another violent specimen Gen Fuedo piles into dozens of police while screencasting live and calling for a revolution.

It’s all very distasteful and there’s no-one with any redeeming features. It turns out the bullied child also has powers, but rather than prevent his mother being assaulted he’s timetabled his revenge for the following day and chooses to see that through. Oshikri’s explanation of how his powers work is creative, but his concentration is on the intimate depiction of violence. Were there a bigger point in play it would possibly be excusable, but there’s not, and there’s rarely more than three pages between more brutality.

The drawing is good, but the journey is laboured. Oshikiri introduces his outsiders with violence, and defines them via the violence they’ve suffered, and it’s an unpleasant process seeing this repeatedly hammered home as every new character introduced suffers before generating violence themselves.

Relief only arrives eighty pages in when Oshikiri has three characters discuss the government’s plans for dealing with the mutations that have erupted in roughly 0.1% of the population, but Oshkiri hasn’t thought that through. Numerically, that’s a hell of a lot of people in any society (65,000 in the UK, 340,000 in the USA or 120,000 in Japan), so the tried and trusted policies of state intimidation and concentration camps aren’t going to work, and the likelyhood is that a considerable number of people in the state apparatus are also now mutants.

The final chapter switches the spotlight to a woman in a wheelchair gathering geniearths to save them. Oh dear! There’s even one illustrated with distinctive eyeglasses. A lack of originality and logic combined with the continuous revelling in violence leaves Geniearth as a series in need of considerable improvement in plot and attitude come Geniearth 2.