So, Japan apparently made a manga about the war in Ukraine... and it surprisingly works

The currently ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war has caused many amounts of pain and suffering. In these cruel times, however, people find brinks of light, heroes who will save them from the pain and bloodshed and lead them out of the darkness of death, telling stories about truly heroic individuals and often describing them as almost supernatural in their nature. This was the case for heroes since the dawn of oral literature and is the case now. One such story is that of the Ghost of Kyiv (Pryvyd Kyiva/Привид Київа), a real world Ukrainian fighter jet pilot who not only succesfully evaded the radars and missiles of the Russian jets, but also managed to single handedly destroy most of their aviation forces. The story has been a sign of inspiration for many people across the nation, becoming a sort off a patriotic urban legend and has, apparently even reached audiences beyond the Ukrainian front, with Americans making news outlets about the skilled individual and the Japanese artist Matsuda Hi writing and illustrating a manga about of the same name him, with the latter example being the subject of today's review. Hi also, apparently, wrote another Russo-Ukrainian war themed piece titled Chonker of Donetsk which is based on the true story of a man who destroys the food supplies of Russian occupiers in Eastern Ukraine, which I haven't read as of writing this review, however, do intend on doing so and as soon as I do that you'll see a review of it on this wonderful platform which I 100% don't use to vent or anything.

Now, this blog is no stranger (*NotSasha from The Magnus Archives peaking her head around the corner*) to comic reviews, however, this is the first time I'm reviewing a manga on here. Wow, 2024 was a year of many firsts for me? First there was my ongoing series of podcast reviews, mostly regarding the absolute joybringer that is The Magnus Archives (2016-2021) and now we have a manga review too, huh? I feel... strangely proud of that. Ok, gloating over, time to explain why it's like that.

I got into anime and manga pretty late in my life. Sure, like any kid I ran into an episode or two of Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Pokemon or any of the million installments in the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise on the TV and I was a religous viewer of The Legend of Zorro (and no, I'm not reffering to the terrible sequel to the endlessly rewatchable 1998 epic western starring Antonio Banderas), as well as the 1974 adaptation of Heidi, the 1990 Robin Hood series and The Story of Cinderella, however I wasn't what you, or anyone really, would call a weeb. In fact, I was very much an avid hater of all things anime and manga, influenced heavily by my parents who viewed those entire branches of media as being exceptionally cringey and downright weird. Then I discovered Ghibli films, the works of Junji Ito, the animated adaptations of Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note and my friends introduced to Parasyte: The Maxim and Yamishibai and, just like that, I was, well not in love, however, still a lot more fond of the medium itself than before I started seriously getting into it (Ghibli films are still the absolute best pieces of feature length animation ever though). However, if we're talking manga specifically, I haven't had much experiance with it. Besides this one, my existing experiance with the medium consists of most of Junji Ito's works, the entirety of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's Death Note and a few chunks of Kentaro Miura's Berserk and Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto. Sure, all of these are considered all-time classics and all that, however, as of right now, my experiance is still rather small and narrow, so everything I say here should be taken with a grain of salt. However, my desire to review everything I watch and read overcomes that and I don't care, so umm, enjoy it, I guess? So let's get into the review, starting off with...

(1) The Writing

Alright, let's get one thing straight: this manga is VERY short. I bought my copy whilst visiting the Polish city of Cracow back in the summer of 2023 (the reason as to why I'm posting this review so late is because I'm playing catch-up) and read it on the same day in under two minutes. It also came in with a bigass poster which now proudly stand on the door of the very room that I'm writing this review inside of, which, I must say, absolutely rocks.

So, how can I analyze the quality of something that's pretty much, for all intents and purposes, a one-shot? Well, I have some short film reviews schedualed too and I'm trying my best to fit everything I read and watch onto here, so here we are, I guess. A reasonable question will pop into the heads of any potential readers not aquainted with the subject matter of this review, that being: Can something so short truly be written well?, which is, in all honesty, a fair question to ask, as well, short-form content oftentimes does indeed lack the depth and complexity of it's long-form cousins, it, nevertheless, can result in absolutely remarkably written pieces. This may not be very apt example as we're talking about a completely different medium, however, recently I began getting more into horror fiction podcasts and titles like The Magnus Archives continue to wow me with the insane levels of complexity and intrigue they manage to provide me with akin to say, long-format television shows, despite the fact that an average episode lasts from 10 to 30 minutes (with the average runtime of a TV show episode being around 40 to 45 minutes, with exceptions being formats/subgenres like sitcoms or animated programming aimed at children).

Due to short-form nature of the content in question achieving things that I usually look for when accessing the quality of a piece, such as complexity of the presentation or subject matter or, at the very least, an attempt at realism of some sort, will, sadly not be featured here, as, due to the very nature of the format, such expectations are damn near impossible. So, we'll just have to see how good the writing is from a purely creative/literary standpoint (althought, to be fair, if I'm honest, it is reasonably grounded in reality for a one-shot, despite lacking any sort of literary complexity) or, to put it in laymen's terms, how the writing of the short stands on it's own two feet. In that regard, I must say, that the piece is written surprisingly well.

The story of the manga is primarily driven by the following aspects:

• the dialoge

• the action.

I'll talk more about the action part of the manga once I get to art section of the review, however, the dialoge of the story is very realistic and manages to exactly what a good one-shot should do; provide us with enough characterization in a brief amount of time.

The characters we follow are an elite group of Russian fighter pilots who are, as we're told, the last remenants of the country's air force severly damaged by the efforts of Ukrainian troops, in particular, the mysterious individual known as The Ghost of Kyiv. Now, this might shock you, however, I had never been in the Russian military myself, nor have I actually met a lot of Russian people in real life (the only Russian person I have had the pleasure from meeting was a friend of mine who had to moved to Croatia from Moscow over a decade ago and has been very critical of the country's political regime and severe propaganda in it's media and said propaganda's influence on the major populus), so some might say I can't really vouch for the realism when it comes to the portrayal of the average Russian soldier's perspective and mentality, however, judging things purely based on the video and audio evidence we have of ACTUAL Russian troops, as well as their portayal in their own pieces of media (such as the 2022 propaganda piece masquerading as a film titled Best in Hell), I can say that the portrayal we got and the dialoge we're presented with are fairly realistic (seeing Ukraine as the ultimate enemy, being surprised at getting bested by them, using up a lot of resources and manpower to no avail, etc.). Gyuko takes the concept of utter terror and helplessnes, however, turns such concepts on it's head in a way I've seen no other writer (manga or otherwise) do in their work. The reader doesn't sympathize with the leads nor with what they're experiancing because they are shown in an exceptionally violent and negative light, as conquerors and startegically minded murderers who don't dwell too much on the philosphies and morality behind their actions (there's literally a moment where one of the side characters asks the classic What are we even fighting for? question, which never gets answered by any of the others), eventually falling victims to their own hubris and, dare I say, stupidity which has, from what we've seen of the war so far, been proven to exactly be the case (one only needs to remember the story of the grandma who managed to take down a Russian military drone with a jar of pickled tomatoes).

Now, just as a sidenote in case anyone tries to take any section of this review out of context (which, if you do, congrats dumbass, you're such a brave strong troll, have a cookie) I DO NOT hate all Russians, nor did I ever say I do. I hate the ones that support the invasion, as well as Putin's other policies, willingly partake in spreading lies and conspiracy theories about Ukraine and it's people (be they civilians, historians, politicians, journalists, authors, screenwriters, directors, producers, artists, social media influencers etc.) through the most powerful tool known to mankind (media) or straight up willingly partake in what have been oficially declared as war crimes by the international community. According to the afforementioned friend of mine, there is an oficially licensed and recognized organization of Russian immigrants that actively tries to surpress the spread of such narratives to the public and provides financial and humanitarian aid for Ukraine in what's proven to be one of the most violent and unnecesarily brutal conflicts in recent European history, and I have nothing but the upmost respect for them. Anyways, my apologies for the political rant (althought such are inevitable when discussing pieces of media that involve the subjects of war and politics), I just had to get it out as I don't want to alienate any members of my audience nor provide any of my existing haters with a new source of mockery.

(2) The Art

As you can see by the panels and the coverart I've provided within this review, the art in the manga itself is very striking. Now, I myself am not artist (well, not a good one atleast), however, I have many excpetionally talented friends who are, so, I've decided to ask THEM for a professional opinion, so this part won't be my thoughts exactly, however, if you really do want to know my unproffesional commentary, I'll provide it right after I provide their overeviews.

One of them described it as follows: There isn't really much to discuss here in terms of art. It's solid. Like any piece of narrative art, it's good as long as it's comprehensible. There isn't much here I can critique nor analyze if I'm honest.

The other described it as follows: It's not the most outstandingly beautiful volume I've ever seen, but it's not bad, in fact, it looks quite alright. It's nothing special. It's a solid artstyle that goes well with the story it's telling, but it's far from being straight up bad at any level.

So, yeah, you've heard what the pros have to say, now let's hear from a layman like myself.

I think the artstyle of the manga does exactly what a good art in this particular form of media should do: accompany the story and be the driving force of the action, which, in my opinion, Hi pulls off exceptionally well. As I have never been in combat, I myself am not aware as to just how accurate the portrayal of aerial warfare is in this volume, however, wheater that is the case with it or not, Hi's artstyle ideally transpires the reader straight into the heart of the action sequences. You feel every painful wince, every swift turn and sense the colossal magnitude of explosions and fired shots and, even though you aren't fond of the characters themselves and cheer on as you see them get shot down and knocked out again and again until they all seemingly perish (or retreave). It's surprisingly more dynamic than I expected from such a short piece, however, it's also equally as gripping and it got surprisingly tense at points (or maybe it was just my acrophobia acting up, I have no clue). It fits pretty well with the harsh and militaristic dialoge shared between the leads and, even though all of the art is black and white (a trend that I've noticed is quite common when it comes to manga, as well as a lot of European comics) your brain manags to ideally put colors in places where they belong (or was that just the case with me, again, I'm not sure). Hi manages to find the perfect balance between realism and astheticism (as any artist depiciting real world wars should be) and the manga would work equally as well (if not even better) if it was completely dialoge free in my opinion, as the visuals do more than enough to not only enhance the story, but also aid it in terms of pacing and sending out a message.

So, would I reccomend The Ghost of Kyiv to anyone?

Well, if you're a heavy manga reader and want to get into some shorter and slightly more obscure properties that also tackle current events (especially if you're interested in seeing as to how non-Ukrainians view the events of the Russo-Ukrainian War and choose to depict it in various forms of media) then I feel like this will be right up your alley. I'd also reccomend it for anyone whose a fan of comics in general, especially if you're heavily into military history and combat strategies, as it (atleast visually) does feature a lot of details that you might be familiar with. There isn't much one can say about it, as it's just a perfectly shor and sweet action packed adventure with a degree of charm brought on forth by it's real world inspiration, has a perfectly serviceable artstyle that does it's subject matter justice and is written with a certain degree of realism that I appreciated quite a lot. Sorry if this review wasn't as deep or long as they usually tend to be, however, sadly, there wasn't much here that could be analyzed. Brief sidenote before ending this: apparently a part of the profits made by each sale of the manga go to funding the Ukrainian Armed Forces, so, yeah, getting a copy does indeed count as humanitarian work in way. Stay safe, enjoy your manga and glory to Ukraine babyyyy!!!