The great manga collection clean-up continues! As I continue to sort though the random manga I’ve collected over the years, we come to Gate 7 , which I really started to like right about the time when I imagine most Western readers starting feeling overwhelmed by it.
Alas.
SPOILERS
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The story begins like just about every urban fantasy-esque, hidden world manga you’ve ever read. A seemingly normal boy who has a deeply geeky passion for history and a deep love of Kyoto, finally gets the chance to visit his favorite city… only to get instantly caught up in a magical battle between forces he doesn’t understand.
I have a lot of sympathy for Takamoto Chikahito here, honestly.
But thanks to this random encounter, Takamoto gets adopted by two hot men and their fem agender demon companion. You know, like you do.
The guys don’t really introduce themselves because they fully intend to wipe the memory of this encounter from Takamoto’s brain. Only magic doesn’t seem to work on him. That was, in fact, how he’d managed to blunder through a magical barrier into the middle of the supernational battlefield that these three were engaged on. Eventually, we learn that the dark-haired one, who controls the power of light, is named Sakura and the light-haired one, who controls the powers of darkness, is named Tachibana. We will later discover that there’s a very obscure reference to a garden belonging to a Heian period emperor where a tachibana (orange) tree was planted on the right and a sakura (cherry) tree was planted on the left, like sentinels or honor guards.
The little demon person is called Hana and is maybe an oni in service to the clan that these guys belong to called Ura-Shichiken (translates to Seven Secret Houses… or, you know, the seven gates), but I didn’t get far enough to know for certain.
I will tell you that the reason I’m a terrible person who should not be trusted is that I immediately fell in love with this guy the moment he showed up:
This is the clan’s head, Said Mikoto, the reincarnation of Hidetsugu Toyotomi. Because of the oni he inherited, everyone simply calls him Hidetsugu.
Apparently, this is where a lot of people said, “I’m out.” According to Wikipedia, when this manga was reviewed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, they said, “The only drawback to this series is the fact that a reader does need to have at least a little bit of knowledge of Japanese history in order to truly understand some of the concepts introduced” Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network apparently felt similarly hampered by the need to constantly refer to the glossary in the back.
I’m not entirely sure I agree.
I thought the story read fine without knowing any of the information presented in the glossary. Honestly, I didn’t realize there was a glossary until I got to the end of the manga. I read all the information in it (which is where I found out the whole thing about the orange and cherry trees,) but knowing that didn’t actually change how I read the story? Mostly this kind of fighting manga / supernatural mystery manga? For instance, who Hidetsugu was is very much discussed in the text of the manga. The characters discuss this, on the page, at length. What we know about him is that he was a powerful warrior from some past time plagued by a bunch of misfortune having at least something to do with his line of succession which is how this random modern guy, maybe, ended up an oni that once belonged to Hidetsugu. Sure knowing more about the historical Hidetsugu is interesting? But, he didn’t REALLY HAVE AN ONI, so, you know, just following along on the mystical, made-up stuff is what’s actually important, and all of that is there.
The real question of this manga, which I was fairly interested in, is: “What the heck is our hero, Takamoto?” There’s a bunch of discussion in this first volume about how he’s… negative space? A “not.” This is why he’s immune to a bunch of different magic things. But, at one point Hidetsugu suggest that this makes Takamoto like Hana.
Which is interesting.
Let’s not lie. I love these stupidly complex worlds and set-ups. So, it is with a heavy-heart that I must report that this manga never finished. It got four volumes in and then was put on extended hiatus, which then became permanent.
Thus, as tempting as it is for me to read forward, I’ll probably stop here. Given how MUCH information and plot we got in the firs volume, I can only imagine that this series just builds in more and more historical references and world building. I just don’t want to get invested in the mystery only to be left hanging. Unless there is a reader out there who has read the whole series (in so much as got written) and tells me it’s worth it!
Alas!
The art is actually better than the scans above would have you believe. This is also another series that would benefit from finding the officially licensed in English versions. Not only do they provide the glossary for non-Japanese history buffs, but also the translation is easier to read. Also, one of the other complaints about this manga is how busy the backgrounds are and how difficult that makes the story to visually process, I will say that scans are always a bit muddy, so seeing the manga as it was drawn does, in fact, help with that.
Do I recommend it? I don’t think I can, since it quits without a true ending. Will I keep it? I almost want to. There is room on my shelves and there is a part of me that would like to keep an eye out for the remaining three volumes to see where the story goes. I mean, I could read it online? But, I did like having the extras that the glossary provided. We’ll see, I guess.
Did anyone out here read it? What did you think?
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