As Rob Zombie eloquently states in his introduction, this volume of 3x3 EYES "does not contain muscle-bound steroid freaks! This book does not contain silicone-packing mutant bimbos sporting day-glo pantyhose! This book does contain a nutty three-eyed girl named Pai and Yakumo a pseudo-transvestite wildman. Together they join forces for some koo-koo adventures, Jack!"
As much as I respect and revere the works and words of Rob Zombie, here is a more detailed synopsis of 3x3 EYES: It all starts when Yakumo, a fairly ordinary Japanese man except for the fact that he works in a transvestite bar and never opens his eyes, comes across a young girl in rags and wearing a sing around her neck that says "Please take me to Junin-Machi in Shinjuku," which is Yakumo's home address. He initially dismisses her, but he comes to her rescue when she gets mugged. Yakumo manages to chase the mugger away, but the girl's staff gets stolen.
Yakumo takes the girl to the bar he works at, where he finds out that her name is Pai and that she has a letter for him from his father. According to the letter, Yakumo's dad was traveling in the mountains of Tibet looking for a fabled race of three-eyed monsters called the Sanji-yanunkara and Pai is one of these triclops. Yakumo's father also writes that he nearly died in the mountains of Tibet but was saved by Pai and, in exchange for saving his life, Yakumo's father agreed to help Pai become human. Alas, Yakumo's father dies before he can fulfill his promise to Pai, but not before he charges Yakumo with taking up where he left off to help Pai become human.
As you can probably guess, Yakumo takes all of this with a grain of salt. But before he can tell Pai that it's not a good time for him to drop everything and go globe-hopping in search of a way to turn a mythical three-eyed monster human, a giant bird monster with the face of a man appears in the sky above Shinjuku. It turns out that this monster is actually Pai's friend Takuhi who was released from her staff by the mugger who stole it. In the process of trying to bringing Takuhi under control, Yakumo is mortally wounded, but before he dies, Pai's Sanjiyan powers awaken (i.e. her third eye appears on her forehead) and she sucks up Yakumo's soul, turning him into a indestructible zombie.
As you might imagine, all of this convinces Yakumo that his father's story wasn't a nonsensical rambling from a dying man. So Yakumo agrees to help Pai out and, according to Yakumo's father's letter, they look for a man named Aguri who works for the Yogekisha company in Hong Kong. After some difficulty Pai and Yakumo find the Yogekisha company, which turns out to be a publishing company for an occult magazine, but Aguri isn't there—only his assistant Li Ling-Ling and she is able to explain to Pai and Yakumo how they might be able to turn Pai into a human. Not too long after Pai and Yakumo arrive at Yogekisha, a wealthy Hong Kong socialite named Huang Song Li hires the company to investigate the infestation of her mansion by demons. But all is not as it seems, as Huang Song Li is not as she seems, and she may actually have some connection to the disappearance of Aguri and the demons that are terrorizing her mansion.
Despite the sometimes goofy moments (like a mugging on a busy Japanese street and the occasional cheesecake fan service, which I actually didn't mind that much), 3x3 EYES was an enjoyable read. And at the risk of sounding like an annoying sound bite, this was a fun read as well. Rob Zombie was right, this is some "koo-koo" crazy stuff.
Yuzo Takada manages to tell a story that has a good mix of action and comedy without becoming boring and cliched. And many of Takada's characters have some pretty funny quirks. Yakumo does some very brave things, even though he is just an ordinary Japanese student who works at a transvestite bar and never opens his eyes and can't do something simple like calculus. Li Ling-Ling, who has a Chinese name that I don't think Yuzo Takada had to think too hard to come up with, doesn't believe in monsters despite working for a magazine that chronicles the occult. In fact, she believes that Yakumo and Pai are actually ninjas instead of supernatural beings. And Huang Song Li's butler looks like a malevolent, grown-up version of Eddie Munster.
Dark Horse originally released 3x3 EYES several years ago, but they canceled it after a short run because of poor sales. Now the manga has made its comeback in the pages of Dark Horse's manga anthology magazine Super Manga Blast. Hopefully, Dark Horse will keep 3x3 EYES around for a good while longer because from reading this volume 3x3 EYES has a good start and a lot of possibility for future stories. In fact, in Japan the 3x3 EYES manga has been running for over ten years and been collected in over thirty volumes.
All in all, 3x3 EYES is a good read and one that I can recommend. About the only thing that I found that was really weird, besides the goofy character quirks and convenient coincidences, was that all the Chinese people had pointy ears
