Crying Freeman

I had this one on the back burner for a while, hoping I could dose up on some manly when I was feeling the need, but it fell quite a bit short of my expectations. The premise is quite interesting, a softhearted, handsome man with a natural charm forced to kill for a foreign mafia, but it doesn't do enough with the premise to warrant further attention.

Crying Freeman feels like a humorless eighties cop film. The overall aesthetic is bland and melancholic, lacking characters that draw the reader in or give reason to care about what's happening. Side characters are thrown in to be violated or injured simply to showcase how gruesome the world can be, coming off flat and heavy handed.

The art's decent, no real flair to it or anything unique. It does the job of covering the action and setting, but the realism leaves much to be desired. Could have easily been simple traces of real life locations, which is off putting and unimaginative.

If you're looking for a crime story, this might be a decent piece to check out, but otherwise Crying Freeman is so middling I can't truly recommend it.

Kazuo Koike wrote the greatest manga of all time. Why the fuck did he write this garbage ten years later?

Crying Freeman is about an artist who, upon witnessing mafia activities, was kidnapped and hypnotized into becoming a perfect assassin. And yet, as he never wished to be a killer, he cries every time he kills. That’s pretty much all there is to his character, other than how horny he is.

Freeman never has to change, grow, or even struggle. He can be outnumbered and surrounded by men with guns, but as soon as he takes out his knives, you pretty much know he’s gonna come out of it on top with the other guys dead. There’s no tension, because Freeman is already the ultimate assassin and nobody can really compete with him. If it ever makes it seem like he’s in trouble, don’t worry, it’s probably all according to his plan anyway.

The static protagonist, the paragon, is a technique that Kazuo Koike has used before, in a much better manga. There, it worked because the character was deeply interesting, with many complex themes to explore. Here, it feels like no more than a power fantasy. It’s not just in fights that Freeman has an easy time. If a woman shows up in the story, she’s almost certainly going to end up horny for Freeman, and chances are if she’s attractive, she’ll be having sex with him sooner or later. The amount of sex in the story feels juvenile rather than mature, and people tend to fall in love for no reason.

Including at the start of the story, where Freeman and his love interest fall in love at first sight. And somehow, falling in love turns Freeman from a tragic character, forced to kill without the heart of a murderer, into an ambitious mafia lord. He gets handed leadership of the supposed most powerful mafia in the world, simply because his assassination ability, with no tests of his loyalty or leadership ability. And apparently my initial read on his character was wrong, because he’s actually fine with killing, and will spend the rest of the manga as the ruthless leader who takes down other mafias that dared to mess with him.

That’s how most of the story flows. Some other criminal gang tries to take over theirs or crosses them in some other way. Freeman deals with them, with very little struggle. It never builds up to a finale or climax; there’s just more of these episodes until it’s over. At least you get some violent fights out of it, which don’t hold back on gore.

The art’s fine. I like how it draws faces in closeup. From a distance, they can be a little undetailed, with thick brush strokes, possibly in imitation of a much better artist Koike has partnered with in the past. The backgrounds can be very detailed, which can make the undetailed characters look jarring against them. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of it is traced.

I hated reading this manga. No character has depth. There’s an idea they start from, which mostly just boils down to “badass” or “loyal wife” or whatever, and they never diverge from that base idea with a single surprise. Their decisions are illogical and never fleshed out in a believable way, because they're just written to conform to that base idea even if how they got there is completely unrealistic. If I wanted to be as charitable as possible, I would maybe say it explores themes of loyalty and dedication. Does it honestly say anything interesting about them?

If you honestly just want a badass mafia man killing people and don’t care about the story being well written beyond that, or if you love the idea of mafia leaders tattooed with animals that represent what their gang does, then maybe you’ll find this entertaining enough to be worth reading. Personally, I thought it was pure mindless schlock. I only read it because it came from the same mind that created Lone Wolf and Cub. If you’re looking at it for the same reason, please, just don’t bother.

This manga is hard to get into, in that the main character is really difficult to sympathize with or get invested into. His basic premise of an assassin that doesn't actually want to kill works and as far as that went it was a reasonably strong story. But from there, he somehow becomes the head of the organization that kidnapped him in the first place, who were first portrayed as the villains, but they suddenly become the side the reader is supposed to be on the side of, with no justification given for why the reader should suddenly sympathize with them over any of their opponents. This is compounded by the fact that Freeman, as well as most of his companions, have very little character. The protagonist being a blank slate can work if the people surrounding them have strong characters that push them along, but here that wasn't the case. Rather, he's a character completely lacking personality and with no clear motivations or goals beyond the immediate situation he's in, but still the one pushing the plot somehow most of the time. This combined with the fact that there isn't really much of an overarching narrative, results in a story that doesn't really have much substance at all and is essentially pointless. The manga does have its strong points though, in that while Freeman may not have much of a character that's interesting or easy to sympathize with, the way he handles situations is interesting and pretty cool. What I mean by that is that while it really doesn't matter why he's doing any of what he's doing or who he is at all really, the actions he takes that make up each of the individual stories that make up the larger story are all pretty interesting. He dealt with opponents in ways that often had him being clearly overpowered, but in the end still looked pretty cool and were pretty varied, with strong action and a good sense of style, and that in a way can hold up the manga reasonably. The art was strange, in that it clearly had a lot of effort put into it, but it looked pretty bad to me with the shots that were supposedly meant to be eye catchers often being the worst of the lot, but it was something I got used to eventually. 

tl;dr: A manga that's lacking substance overall but has a decent amount of good moments.

I cannot say if one should like or dislike Crying Freeman, this title starts out with such great potential but ends up being a pile of swill. In fact if Crying Freeman began and ended with the first story arc, then I would say it was a manga classic that all should read. From this great high point does this title fall, and fall hard it does right into a murky pit of crud.

The story its self starts out semi-realistic, it’s not crazy or over the top for this genre of story, but slowly the inclusion of crazier and silly elements are added making it feel slitted. One can tell the author must have been looking though a murky puddle of muck as the story ends up going no where and seems rather piecemealed together. The characters are also a disjointed mess. Some are refreshing and interesting, while others are painfully irritating.

The art here stands out here as a strong point as it features the wonderful line work of Ryoichi Ikegami. Who’s style is much more realistic then the manga norm, which features a lot of detail and cross hatching. This is one of this older works so the art is a bit dated by today’s standards but still comes though very well.

I enjoyed Crying Freeman but over time less and less so. The first story arc is stand out piece of work but by the third arc the story just seem silly and ridiculous. I enjoyed the first story arc so much though, that I would at least say I over all enjoyed the story.

I’d say it is at least worth picking up the first volume of Crying Freeman for the first story arc, as that story is a stand out piece in the mobster genre.