A Thousand Miles

GetBackers

****

GetBackers is an action comedy by Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine. It was serialized in Weekly Shounen Magazine between march 1999 and February 2007. Tokyopop published 28 of its 39 volume run between February 2004 and March 2009.

Cover Appeal

Yuya Aoki/Rando Ayamine – Yuya Aoki is a pen name (one of many) of Shin Kibayashi. Shin has an impressive catalog to their name and has made more than a few forays into mystery and drama – usually with a sci-fi or supernatural bent. The duo were responsible for Psycho Buster and they return for more supernatural shenanigans here.

Dat Color Palette – Return of the limited color palette. In similar fashion to Blazin Barrels, GetBackers utilizes a limited palette of warm tones. The front cover is a shot of the titular GetBackers in bright oranges, yellows and red in an urban setting. The back cover shows a smiling girl in the same tones. The warm colors, combined with Ban and Ginji’s expressions lend a serious, but mostly optimistic air.

The Gist

Ban and Ginji are the (not really) famous “GetBackers” recover agency (motto: “Getting back what shouldn’t have been gone”). They have an almost 100% recovery rate. But, as these things tend to go, the two are down on their luck. We open to the duo trying to score a free lunch date from a couple of random girls and eventually scrounging for change. Fortunately for the two, a kind homeless man offers them food and a job – help him find his daughter, who has been abducted by Yakuza. Can our dynamic duo get his daughter back? Will they ever get enough coin to eat again?

Cast

Ban Mido – 18 year old recovery agent. A quarter German. Owns a driver’s license, meaning he likely owns the car the two can hardly afford to drive. Possesses the “Evil Eye”, a power allowing him to induce hallucination in his target, through eye contact, for a minute.

Ginji Amano – 18 year old recovery agent. Former leader of the notorious “Volts” street gang. He can generate high voltages and, thus, potent electric charge. He’s a little more pragmatic and outwardly optimistic than Ban. He’s also more of a sucker for the ladies than Ban.

Mr. Yamamura – Homeless ex-business owner. Takes pity on the duo when they’re starving in the street. Begs them to find his daughter, Rika Yamamura.

Hevn – On and off again business partner of the duo. Ban doesn’t like her because she tends to bring them high paying, but unconventional, if not outright dangerous, jobs. I’m sure that 30% handling fee and her weaponized flirting aren’t doing her any favors, either.

The Rub

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – our protagonists are highly skilled handyman, but are down on their luck financially. Well, yeah Ban and Ginji fit this bill to a T. It’s a trope we’ve seen similar shades of in the likes of Outlaw Star, Devil May Cry, Blazin Barrels. But this debuted 20 years ago, so “Seinfeld is unfunny” may be in effect.

Ban and Ginji complement each other quite well. Ban is the cynicism to Ginji’s optimism. While they’re both shown hitting on girls, Ban is shown trying to trick them into a lunch date to feed the (albeit starving) duo while Ginji does so because he genuinely finds them attractive. Ironically, they embody places on the “idealism vs pragmatism” scale that one may not expect in regards to their employment. Ban seems like the idealistic one, stubbornly refusing to accept anything other than recovery gigs while Ginji pragmatically suggests getting part time jobs (at a restaurant, no less). However, Ban becomes the pragmatic one when approached with a recovery job, outright refusing jobs he feels don’t pay enough while Ginji is the one who idealistically wants to take on said jobs for the sake of just helping a poor soul out.

Beyond that, Rando Ayamine throws down some great art. The girls are pretty, the cartoony bits offer amusing exaggeration and Ban’s evil eye power allows Rando to really flex. The detail and grotesqueness of the Yakuza hallucination drives home how alarmingly effective his power can be.

Those sound like compliments, right? I WANT to like GetBackers, so why do I find myself kinda, not? All of the disparate parts are working as intended and working well, but they’re missing something. And that something makes the whole feel like less than the sum of those parts.

That thing, my friends, is STORY. In this volume, we see three jobs (or two and a half of their adventures). And I can’t, for the life of me, tell you what the overarching goal is. There isn’t one at this point, we’re squarely in the realm of episodic material. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not my cup of tea.

The Verdict

Episodic material can still be great (see: Cowboy Bebop). However, without the narrative hook of a greater scope goal or story, things like characters, atmosphere and subplots have to pull extra duty to entertain. With the two adventures in this volume, I’m lead to believe that they are representative of what I will receive for a while.

And those didn’t hook me and pulled in. So, sadly…..

Continue?: Sadly, No