Review by Ian Keogh

Search and Destroy’s opening chapter introduces a grim world where humans without technical modifications are rare, and derisorily referred to as “hyoo” by others with artificial brains and additional cyborg alterations, known as “kreach”. One of them, later calling herself Hyaku, is shown raiding a heavily guarded gangster to retrieve a tongue, slaughtering anyone standing between her and her target.

Although it can be read and enjoyed with no knowledge of the background, there’s an extra layer to knowing Atsushi Kaneko has based Search and Destroy on Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo. The tone is completely different, dark rather than comedic adventure, but it also concentrates on a character with a mission to locate lost body parts and knowing about Dororo is an instant doorway into otherwise unexplained events. Dororo is also represented by Doro, a hyperactive young child who talks continually, often to herself.

Kaneko has taken his set-up from Tezuka, but has so thoroughly built around it that Search and Destroy is an original work with its own depth, feeling and a completely different style. Cyberpunk sensibilities apply to a location changed from feudal Japan to a fusion of the future with the trappings of a mid-20th century Soviet state. Uniforms, architecture and iconography are incorporated to create a comprehensive mileu in which powerful gangsters also operate with impunity.

While the ongoing plot catches the attention from the start, it’s Kaneko’s art that really grabs the eye. It’s excellently composed to maximise startling images while also prioritising storytelling efficiency. Hyaku’s design as a shambling person covered in a stinking animal fur cloak is deliberately mysterious and Doro’s contrastingly open. Both are anomalies in the formerly structured locations. The stylistic contrast of stark black and white and the occasional panel brings the work of Charles Burns to mind.

A civil war is mentioned as the starting point for the society Hyaku operates in, seemingly merely a background element, yet the final three chapters see Kaneko embrace the past to explain Hyaku. She’s a different personality when younger, but the past is also used to show her capabilities and her limitations. She can go one on one with a bear, but not necessarily defeat it. By the volume’s end the trip to the past has explained the title, who Hyaku is and what she wants, and readers will have picked up on a larger objective even Hyaku hasn’t yet realised.

Astonishingly good art combined with a heartbreaking mission and distanced emotion serve up excellence and a series with the potential to match its inspiration. It continues in Vol. 2.