Old Boy

AUTHOR: Tsuchiya, Garon

ARTIST: Nobuaki Minegishi (illustrator); Kathryn Renta (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Futabasha (Japanese); Dark Horse Comics (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLISHED:Orudo Boi, 1996-1998

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1997-1998 (English translation, 2006-2007)

• Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan (2007)

Publication History

Old Boy,written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi, was initially serialized in Japan by Futabasha in its magazine Weekly Manga Action from 1996 to 1998. The series eventually had seventy-nine chapters, and these were published in eight books, or collected volumes (tankobon). Volume 1 was released in May, 1997, and Volume 2 in December, 1997. Volumes 3 through 8 appeared in 1998, with the culminating volume released in October. The series was very popular in Japan, and its popularity was later enhanced by a successful and award-winning South Korean film based on the manga, which appeared in 2003. This led Dark Horse Comics, an American publisher, to purchase the rights for an English version in 2005. The first volume of the English translation appeared in July, 2006; Volumes 2 and 3 were released in the latter months of 2006, and the remaining Volumes (4-8) were published in 2007. The editor of the English version is Chris Warner, with Darin Fabrick as collection designer and Kumar Sivasubramanian as translator. The film version continued to produce interest in the manga, and Futabasha rereleased the series in five volumes in June and July, 2007.

Plot

The driving predicament of Old Boy is the central character’s obsessive quest to discover why he has been kidnapped and privately imprisoned for ten years and suddenly freed. The manga opens with the delivery of noodles to the “man on floor 7.5” in a Tokyo office building. The man’s windowless chambers contain little more than a bed, a television set, and a toilet, but to maintain his sanity he has practiced vigorous exercises to keep himself physically fit, with the hope that he might ultimately be able to exact vengeance for his meaningless suffering. Soon after the food is delivered via a narrow slot, three men wearing dark glasses enter the room to inform the prisoner that he has been released from the “private penitentiary” after serving his ten-year sentence. The man takes out his pent-up rage on his releasers, who knock him out and stuff him into a suitcase. They bring him to a park, empty him onto the ground, and shove some money into his pocket.

When the man regains consciousness he looks up and sees the moon and stars, exulting in his newfound freedom. But this feeling is short-lived, as he becomes disoriented by the teeming life of Tokyo. He abandons an attempt to make a telephone call to access someone from his past, reasoning that no one will believe him. Nevertheless, he decides that he will fight back. As a test, he pretends to be intoxicated to tempt four hooligans to take advantage of him, and when they try to, he knocks each of them senseless; instead of taking all their money, however, he modestly pockets only what he will need to live for a few days, including some food and his first beer in ten years. His waitress, Eri, notices a cut on his face and bandages it. She later invites him back to her place to spend the night. She senses a kindness in him and proceeds to lose her virginity to this “man with no name,” who has not experienced the warmth of a woman for a decade.

The man may think he is free to enjoy life and plan his vengeance, but he is followed by an ugly man sent by a banker to track him. The banker, it turns out, has provided the funds for the nameless man’s abduction and imprisonment. Meanwhile, the relationship between Eri and her “mister” deepens, and he confesses to her the details of his ten-year imprisonment, though he cannot remember anyone who hated him enough to do such a thing. Eri discovers a scar on his back, and he forces her to use a knife to dig out a tracking device beneath it. When he gets a construction job, he uses an alias, Yamashita, while trying to deceive his pursuers by placing the device from his back in confusing locations. He also had come across a clue while he was imprisoned: A paper scrap with the name “Blue Dragon” in one of his noodle dishes.

Using this clue and others, Yamashita discovers the building where he was imprisoned, and employing violence, he attempts to wrest from his former captors the reason for his captivity. In a repetition of his earlier plight, however, he is recaptured and then released. Yamashita, whose real name is Shinichi Goto, exchanges his tracking device with a vagrant for a cell phone, which provides him with a choice: either use it to talk with his torturer or destroy it. Seeing the phone as yet another tool of his master manipulator, he destroys it, but the battle of wits between Goto and his unknown tormentor continues through both a boxing match and the story of a woman willing to bargain sexual favors for information about the man who controls her. Goto discovers that his predicament involves a person from his youth, whom he meets at a bar but is unable to recognize through voice or visage.

Goto follows up on the clue that a former school classmate might be the person who engineered his abduction and imprisonment. He meets with a woman who taught both Goto and the unknown tormentor. Through her, Goto comes to realize that his dilemma might be the result of somehow offending his former classmate, but he cannot remember anything that occurred during his adolescence that would warrant the monumental vendetta. The tormentor then reveals to Goto how serious the stakes are in their deadly game, which involves not only Goto’s life but also the lives of his friends.

As this contest of wits continues, Goto learns the name of his mastermind manipulator, Takaaki Kakinuma, who is willing to employ extreme measures to exact his revenge, including the hypnotic conditioning of Goto’s friends and lovers, so that he does not know whom to trust. Since he was similarly conditioned during his imprisonment, he cannot trust even his own memories and his plan for revenge. Kakinuma informs Goto that he will sacrifice his own life if Goto can discover which of his judgments and memories are genuine, and the ultimate meaning behind Kakinuma’s manipulations. In their final, anticlimactic encounter, Goto comes to realize that he had inadvertently wounded Kakinuma’s prodigious pride by expressing sorrow for his classmate’s humiliation when he broke down in tears during a music class. This display of public emotion, unacceptable for Japanese men, coupled with Goto’s response, was the traumatic event that precipitated Kakinuma’s vendetta. In the end, Kakinuma commits suicide. But Kakinuma’s death has not totally freed Goto, who now has to contend with his own unreliable memories and those of Eri, the woman he thinks he loves.

Volumes

• Old Boy, Volume 1 (2006). Freed from a private prison for an unknown offense, Goto plots his revenge and starts to reclaim his life.

• Old Boy, Volume 2 (2006). Using knowledge he gleaned while imprisoned, Goto discovers where he had been held and seeks answers for why he was incarcerated.

• Old Boy, Volume 3 (2006). Through friends he meets, clues he pursues, and activities he becomes involved with, Goto begins to realize that he is being manipulated by his former tormentor.

• Old Boy, Volume 4 (2007). Goto learns that the person responsible for his torment is a former schoolmate. The two meet, but Goto, surprisingly, fails to recognize him.

• Old Boy, Volume 5 (2007). Goto meets with the woman who taught both him and his tormentor, and he learns that he had in some way offended his classmate.

• Old Boy, Volume 6 (2007). Goto finally understands that his nemesis is Takaaki Kakinuma, who informs Goto that his vendetta stems from an emotional trauma he attributes to Goto.

• Old Boy, Volume 7 (2007). Goto learns that his memories and those of his friends have been hypnotically conditioned by Kakinuma.

• Old Boy, Volume 8 (2007). In the endgame, Goto discovers how he caused Kakinuma’s emotional trauma, which leads to his torturer’s suicide and to Goto being left with a diseased mind and heart that he may or may not be able to cure.

Characters

• Shinichi Goto, the protagonist, is a handsome, physically fit man in his midthirties at the story’s beginning. He was a somewhat insensitive adolescent, and a ten-year imprisonment has left him pathologically obsessed with wreaking revenge on those responsible for his suffering. He falls in love with Eri but becomes distrustful of her, as she may have been hypnotically conditioned by his tormentor. Goto’s strong will and clever mind allow him to avoid madness and solve the mystery behind his imprisonment.

• Takaaki Kakinuma, the antagonist, is a wealthy banker and businessman who is surrounded by hirelings rather than friends. His slit-like eyes and somber countenance reveal a man obsessed with revenge for an emotional trauma experienced in childhood. He is the man responsible for Goto’s imprisonment and for the manipulation of him and his friends after his release.

• Eri is a young and pretty waitress in a restaurant, where she meets Goto and bandages his wounds. Eri was hypnotically conditioned to seduce Goto so that Kakinuma’s confederates could conduct surveillance on Goto. Though Goto falls in love with her, he later becomes uncertain of the genuineness of their love.

• Yukio Kusama, an elementary school teacher, who later becomes a writer. She taught both Goto and Kakinuma in her sixth-grade class.

• Tsukamoto, a bartender who was Goto’s friend in the days before his imprisonment and then becomes an acquaintance, albeit a troubled one, as Goto attempts to unravel the mystery behind his imprisonment.

• Kyoko Kataoka, Kakinuma’s chief assistant, was responsible for the hypnotic conditioning of Goto, Eri, and others.

Artistic Style

Tsuchiya was responsible for the story, and Minegishi was responsible for the art, though there was much collaborative cooperation between them. Critics have described Tsuchiya’s storytelling as slow and deliberate, whereas they generally find Minegishi’s black-and-white (with gray wash) drawings clear, simple, and gritty. For example, in the love scene between Goto and Eri, the nudity is handled tastefully, with only secondary sexual characteristics briefly on display, the emphasis instead placed on characterization (Goto’s powerful desire for sexual comfort after ten years of imprisonment and Eri’s need to lose her virginity). The story is told mostly through rectangular panels, although double-page illustrations introduce each chapter and sometimes are used to emphasize important plot points (occasionally nonrectangular panels and half-page panels are used to set scenes).

In the English version, the Japanese text in the speech balloons has been translated, but the text in various drawings has been left unaltered from the original (with English translations in small print above the panels). The style of panels that set scenes, such as panels of Tokyo buildings and nightlife, are nearly photographic, whereas the panels depicting the story in dialogue or action are like traditional comics. When violence is depicted, it is not glamorized, and the viewer is made aware of the real pain that the characters feel. The drawings tend to humanize Goto more than Kakinuma, who is presented, for the most part, as a classic villain.

Some critics have compared Minegishi’s style in Old Boy to film noir because of his use of shadows, silhouettes, and night scenes (Kakinuma’s hirelings are even depicted like American gangsters). Tsuchiya also makes use of film-noir techniques in his narrative; for example, he uses a partially amnesiac protagonist who is being manipulated by an antagonist. The use of periodic flashbacks to gradually clarify plot points is also common in film noir. Finally, the narrative and drawings combine to create sympathy for the protagonist and antipathy for the villain, who gets his comeuppance in the end, though the ambiguous conclusion is typically noirish since it leaves the reader wondering if Goto has really regained his freedom and identity.

Themes

The major theme of Old Boy is revenge. Unlike many classic revenge stories, vengeance is not sweet for either the protagonist or the antagonist. After causing much pain to Goto, others, and himself, Kakinuma dies, unsatisfied and by his own hand. Goto, in his own personal vendetta, also causes pain to the guilty, innocent, and himself, and ends up uncertain of who he is and what he has become.

A secondary theme, tied to the major one, is the search for truth, meaning, and identity. Besides seeking revenge, Goto wants to discover the truth about his condition and himself. His situation is reminiscent of K in Franz Kafka’s Der Prozess (1925; The Trial, 1937); Goto seeks justice in a world in which justice is problematic, illusory, and mysterious. Like the protagonists in many existentialist novels, Goto has been thrown into a meaningless world, and he must forge some kind of personal meaning through actions that may or may not be free. The manga’s ending, which the authors admit was left deliberately ambiguous, leaves room for both nihilist and optimistic interpretations.

Impact

Old Boy revealed the power of the comic-book form to tell extremely complex and profound stories. While some characters are little more than caricatures, the principal ones, especially Goto, are realistically conceived and fully developed. Some critics found that parts of the story strained believability, especially the antagonist’s elaborate vendetta. Nevertheless, Old Boy has commanded a worldwide influence, especially because of the successful film based on its basic story idea. In the United States, a planned film adaptation of the manga will most likely expand and deepen the story’s popularity.

Films

Old Boy. Directed by Chan-wook Park. Egg Films/Show East, 2003. South Korean director Park released his film version of Old Boy in 2003. He changed the location from Tokyo to Seoul, the chief characters’ names (as well as, to a certain extent, their defining traits), and many aspects of the plot, though the principal idea stayed the same. Those who found the end of the manga anticlimactic tended to think that the film was a vast improvement, with the ultimate mystery involving an incest theme. The film has much more graphic violence than the manga, leading some readers to prefer the gentler and more probing storytelling of Tsuchiya and Minegishi. Despite these differences, the film received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics around the world. The film won numerous South Korean and international awards, including the Grand Prix at the fifty-seventh Cannes Film Festival.

Further Reading

Marginal (Garon Tsuchiya), and Takeya Syuji. Astral Project (2008).

Millar, Mark, and Steve McNiven. Nemesis (2011).

Miller, Frank. Sin City (1991-2000).

Bibliography

Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. New York: Collins Design, 2004.

Petersen, Robert. Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2010.

Thompson, Jason. Manga: The Complete Guide. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.