Review by Karl Verhoven

A ‘geniearth’ is the really awkward term Rensuke Oshikiri substitutes for mutants. One wonders why, as so much else is a wholesale X-Men homage, down to a woman in a wheelchair gathering geniearths together to protect others from persecution. The primary difference is Oshikiri’s feeling that X-Men isn’t violent enough, so injecting greater graphic savagery.

Much of Geniearth 1 focussed on Jinjuro Kai, who endured relentless bullying until accumulating enough power to turn the tables on his attackers. Toward the end, though, we were introduced to government operatives with few compunctions about using torture to identify geniearths, and this volume opens with their sadistic chief. He’s basically of the opinion that no-one is innocent and brutal methods must be employed otherwise humanity will be over-run. In the time-honoured witch hunt method, if someone tests normal it’s not that they are normal, it’s that they’ve found a way to circumvent the test. “Anyone even slightly suspicious, we’re throwing them in a cage anyway”, Hajime Suzuki is told, “and sometimes they don’t make it out of the interrogation room. Accidents happen, get it?”

While much of the background is derivative, when it comes to the characters, Oshikiri is more original, with Suzuki being an example. He’s just a normal guy, yet things happen around him to his considerable advantage, devastatingly shown in the second chapter here. It’s chapter nine overall, as Oshikiri is creating a finite series over five volumes.

The art is good at supplying atmosphere with the simplest of backgrounds, but distinguishing the cast isn’t a strength. Too many people look too similar, and at times you may wonder who a particular character is. They also all look younger than they’re meant to be, which is a stylistic quirk readers are going to have to accept.

This is a better volume than the first. Lapses in logic are absent, people’s motivations are clear, the derivative aspects are downplayed and while this is still a violent story, there’s not the same feeling of glorifying the violence. There’s suspense throughout as readers of the first volume know how Kai’s powers work, and know all hell’s a coming. By the end we’re in the middle of two rescues to be continued in Geniearth 3.