Title:
Portus
Portus is a horror graphic novel that involves a
mysterious video game that kills people.
The reason I first picked it up was because of the front cover, it had
all the elements of a scary movie with a floating eye, torn paper, and
blood. I was very interested in reading
it because I had never read horror manga, and was curious to see how it would
be. I’ll be the first to admit it I love
graphic violent scenes that the Japanese love to create. Another thing I like to do when picking up a
manga novel is to look at the back (or in this case the front), and checking to
see if the story ends in this book.
Luckily this story did end in this book.
Writer:
Jun Abe
Art
Work: Jun Abe
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
The story revolves around Asami Kawakami (an art
student), Keigo Sawa (her teacher), and Mayumi Yamashita (another
teacher). In the beginning Asamai is
worried about her friend Chiharu, who’s been ditching school for a few days
because she’s been playing a video game called Portus. Later on, Chiharu commits suicide and Asamai
starts to question the motives for her suicide.
She then decides to play the game Portus to see what could have caused
her friend’s death. Along the way Keigo
and Mayumi also try to figure out why this game is so deadly. What they discover is a danger that must be
stopped in order to save the life of Asamai.
This graphic novel is rated mature, and is
justified in doing so because it contains many violent scenes in it. The characters are very much a cookie-cutter
pattern of what is popular in manga; high school students, and trendy teachers (Keigo
smokes in class). Regardless of this,
it’s used because it’s a working formula that can get into a storyline without
having to explain each and every character’s individuality. As for the story, I found it to be exciting
at first and then it just moved over to a more horror story that became less
realistic for me. I guess I should have
expected this from a horror genre because it asks you to suspend your
disbelief, and I suck at that. Either
way anyone that loves horror and especially appreciates it’s unrealistic ideas
will like this novel.
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