A Thousand Miles

Soul Liquid Chambers

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Soul Liquid Chambers is an action sci-fi manga by Nozomu Tamaki. It started serialization in the Seinen Monthly “Young King OURS GH” in April 2016. Seven Seas Entertainment has published its 3 volume in english here in the west.

Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned

I play loose and fast with how I approach ATM, but I do have a few rules of varying weight I try to adhere to. Namely, “no mangas you’ve already read”, “avoid the manga of the anime you’ve watched” and “only buy volume one, at first”. That last one’s a little important because, if you’ve noticed, all of the ATM entries are capped off with one prompt: “Continue?”. In lieu of a traditional score, I use a metric that I think is more resonant (and useful): Do I want to keep reading this? So it’s with a heavy heart (and a slightly lighter wallet) that I must plead.

You see, by the time of this writing, I will have read all three available volumes of Soul Liquid Chambers. I bought and read them one at a time, each a few days apart. So while technically I didn’t break my own not-very-important-and-set-in-stone rule, I felt that I did owe it to you to let you know what’s up and that I will try my hardest to not let my understanding of the rest of the series seep into my what I have to say about the first volume.

Cover Appeal

HOO BOY….one helluva cover, ain’t it? Now, let’s get this out of the way, this ain’t no Peepo Choo and damn sure ain’t no Saga. Both of those, upon a cursory look, do reveal themselves to have some message or mission. SLC, on the other hand, not so much. So I feel this “contemptible cover” is largely for aesthetics.

The whole cover is essentially a pinup. A visual primer on one of the main characters (that we’ll come to know as Luise) and the environment in which she thrives – all in Nozomu Tamaki’s risque violent style.

So we’ve got this girl with prosthetic limbs standing, Captain Morgan style, on what appears to be a severed zombie head. She’s wearing a gas mask, the arm that isn’t detached is a chainsaw, her leg prosthesis are spiked armor metal legs with high heels. And all while wearing what is either a bikini or just her underwear – a distinction that is likely of little importance to either the audience or the disembodied zombie head taking in the view.

On the back cover you have a mountain of zombie corpses with a teddy bear (also wearing a gas mask) on top of the hill in the background and a container of green goo in the side of the hill in the foreground.

It’s all very style-focused, but there are some interesting little details. For example, there are three pins Luise is wearing – the two on her top are homages to watchmen (the comedians logo, I presume) and what looks like a send up to general pirate culture (skull and crossbones) and the one on her bottoms are an obvious homage to Captain America (it’s the Cap’s shield). I’m not sure if these are favorites of Luise, favorites of Tamaki, inspirations for this series or some combination of the three.

Looking on the front cover, we see the title is accentuated with splatter. Could be blood, could be paint. But seeing as it is multicolored, it’s been stylized nonetheless. Stylistically, it reminds me of High School of the Dead’s opening or Suicide Squad’s promotional materials. Combined with the Grindhouse vibe of Luise’s design, I was primed for a irreverent gorefest that expects you to revel in the violence and shlok instead of being repulsed by it.

Furthermore, the most pivotal characters are on the front and back covers. Yes, characters. One can’t be faulted for thinking you’re seeing one character and her keepsakes. On the front cover is Luise. On the back is Miss Lotte (teddy bear) and Nils Herbert (container). Of course, this doesn’t become apparent until about chapter three, but makes for a good piece of fridge brilliance thereafter.

The Gist

We open to the post apocalyptic 23rd Century. The world has been decimated by a zombie outbreak, among other things. Many humans have been turned into zombies, but many have also been deformed by radioactive mutations. People have congregated into walled off settlements and use guides to, well, guide them through the wasteland, known as “Dead Man’s Playground”, between settlements. One such guide, Emil, is guiding a girl, Ms. Lotte, to a facility for a tour. As expected, this tour goes off the rails when they take an “unplanned” detour, at Ms. Lotte’s request, and the once thought empty facility turns out to still be infested with zombies. Just what secrets does this facility, much less Ms. Lotte herself, hold?

Cast

Emil – Guide in Dead Man’s Playground. Makes a living guiding clients, like Ms. Lotte, through safe pathways in the wasteland. Loyal, though a little excitable.

Lotte – Luise’s younger sister. Jovial and polite, she gets along well with others. She and Luise (among a myriad of other people) are looking for their father. Has a better memory than anyone has any right to have.

Luise – The crass older sister of Lotte. Hot headed at times and mischievous at others, she generally does the fighting.

Jodot – Strong butler of Luise and Lotte. Loyal and protective. Being a butler, he is naturally well mannered.

Nils Herbert – Scientist who worked on the soul liquid technology. Forced to work with Lotte and Luise, he wants to find the rest of his cohorts.

Gustav – A fellow guide and friend of Emil. She accompanies him once things go south.

Mr. Perrault – Leader of a settlement. An old acquaintance of Nils

The Rub

In Guardians of The Galaxy (bear with me, please), Drax the Destroyer, upon being told that a joke went over his head, replies in his general literal minded demeanor that “nothing goes over his head”, that he “would catch it” because his “reflexes are too fast”. Now, you might just dismiss this as him being literal minded (it is), but he also just, likely inadvertently, made a metaphor so on point, one would be forgiven for wondering if he wasn’t fully aware and was just messing with us.

I had a similar experience with Soul Liquid Chambers and it’s “Soul Liquid”. Their claims that “the soul conundrum was put to rest” with the advent of the soul chambers didn’t completely sit right with me at first. It felt like they were putting the cart before the horse (or just omitting the horse altogether) because it felt like they were trying to get out of doing their work. They wanted the thematic presence of a soul, but didn’t want to engage with it in the conventional manner that gives it its usual weight as a concept. Whatever, maybe I was just being a big baby and needed to get over the fact that souls worked differently here.

Maybe I’m making more of it than I should, but the way SLC depicts souls grew on me. That’s due to the fact that, despite its unconventional presentation, SLC’s Soul Liquid shares some commonalities with my own ideas of a soul as well as its depiction enriching the story in a way I didn’t recognize at first.

You see, in SLC, if a zombie bites you, your soul oozes out of every hole in your body. Yuck. But that means that a soul is TANGIBLE. It’s a physical entity that is separate from your body. I think of souls the same way I think of data and mediums. Data is different from its medium, but data can’t exist without a medium. To me, your soul is the totality of your personality, experiences and thinking pattern in your brain meats. However, there’s no way to move or copy any of that, so your brain is your de facto soul. Considering the fact that Soul Liquid is treated, in universe, like a mashup of “The Evil Within”’s brain juice and “Ghost in the Shell”’s cyberbrain, I’d say the story seems to agree.

But moving on to how it affects the story, the soul being a tangible thing grounds SLC squarely in the sci-fi camp. Souls are generally metaphysical things that frequent fantasy stories with magical and spiritual slants to them. Sci-fi likes to opine on the nature of the soul, but easily falls prey to the “cybernetics will eat your soul” trope at times. Soul Liquid is very much organic and side steps that trope. The literal essence of a person can be bottled up and saved, being treated (and acting) as the person proper. This feels less like an admonition about technology destroying one’s humanity and more like a story putting the concept of humanity under a microscope.

Returning to the zombies, we see what I think is the most impressive thing that objectifying the soul does. Do you know why Jojo’s Stands exist as they do? It’s because Hirohiko Araki wanted to enhance the presentation of superpowers. As such, he personified and objectified them to enhance their presence in a scene. I came to realize that objectifying souls plays the same part here. Zombies are soulless creatures in most people’s eyes. So what better way to visually present that theme than to turn the soul into a tangible thing and have it literally ooze out of the victim.

Gooey visual metaphors aside, the best part of SLC is the main trio. Luise gets to shine brighter than the other two in the beginning. Being the main fighter, she’s the one who has to go toe to toe with the zombie horde. Things between her and Emil are a little strained at first. She’s definitely more cynical and less trusting than her sister Lotte. She’s abrasive, for sure – borderline abusive at times. But she reserves the latter for people and times that deserve it. She chastises Emil for gawking at someone else’s misfortune, losing one of their (albeit REALLY important) suitcases and threatens to leave him behind if he doesn’t start playing ball. But for all of her tough talk about how worthless he is, Luise changes her tone when she realises she’s overstepped her bounds and that Emil indeed has family that cares about him too. She’s mean but still has a heart.

Emil himself ain’t no slouch either. As a guide, his job is essentially to avoid the type of conflicts that arose at the beginning of the story, so it makes sense that he would take a back seat to Luise’s sheer stopping power and presence. He doesn’t have Luise’s ferocity, but what he does have is a network of good connections and it’s later on, once he can draw upon this, that he comes into his own. Underestimated by the bad guys (and, if we’re honest, the audience as well), he flies under the radar and puts a nice little gambit in play with the help of his guide buddies that saves the day. The best part is that he caps it off with a rousing speech that affirms the guides as a force to be reckoned with, while also doubling as a scathing indictment of everyone who thought otherwise – even us.

Now, listening to just that, it’s easy to see Lotte as the odd one out. She doesn’t have the same presence as Luise or Emil since she doesn’t fight or have a guild at her back. She feels like, and likely is, the kid of the group. However, she acts as mission control to the other two, using her superb memory and the ranged communication capabilities to relay information. Furthermore, she’s the one that’s in control outside of combat since her demeanor’s much more palatable. It’s not zombie slaying, but it saves everyone’s bacon on a few occasions, so it’s worth its weight in gold.

The Verdict

As stated before, I liked SLC enough to go on ahead with the rest of the series . And that’s because it’s a fun romp in wonton destruction and crassness. Luise and all of her toys, from bladed leg prosthesis to chainsaw arms, are a blast to watch. But it isn’t all just zombie bits and bullets. This is a world persevering in the face of adversity. Even in the apocalypse, life moves on and the world of SLC is full of settlements that reflect familiar trappings of society – for better and for worse. Watching people from different backgrounds coalesce around the main trio, representing the best of humanity, pushing back on the the worst parts of humanity that the vacuum of the apocalypse has allowed to run rampant is heartwarming. It isn’t new by any means, as zombie oriented media has a long history of having moral subtext, but it’s still interesting nonetheless. Soul Liquid would be an extremely contentious technology in real life and it’s doubly so in the world of this manga. You can see all of the benefits of such technology, but having to grapple with the sobering reality of how said technology practically destroyed the world once and threatens to do so again adds a bit of nuance that is hard to swallow at times.

I picked this up expecting to get some trashy, fanservicey fun. You get the fanservice, but you don’t get the trashy because the characters are fun to watch and it isn’t just mindless action. Having just started the Dance in the Vampire Bund manga, I shouldn’t be TOO surprised as Nozomu Tamaki can work their way around some societal and emotional turmoil when they want to. So, here’s to you, Soul Liquid Chambers.

Continue?: Hell Yeah.