Abara
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''Abara'' (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese
manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
series written and illustrated by
Tsutomu Nihei is a Japanese manga artist. Nihei has been drawing comics professionally since the mid-1990s. In 1995 he was awarded the Jiro Taniguchi Special Prize in that year's Afternoon Four Seasons Award for his submission, ''Blame''. After working as an ...
. It was serialized in
Shueisha (lit. "Gathering of Intellect Publishing Co., Ltd.") is a Japanese company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The foll ...
's ''seinen'' manga magazine ''
Ultra Jump is a Japanese monthly seinen manga magazine published by Shueisha under the Jump line of magazines. Originally, the magazine was a special issue of ''Weekly Young Jump'' which was first issued in 1995. On October 19, 1999, the special issue beca ...
'' from May 19, 2005, to March 18, 2006, with its chapters collected in two ''
tankōbon is the Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or cultur ...
'' volumes. The series takes place in a dystopian universe characterized by towering edifices. It centers around a particular class of beings, termed Gaunas, who possess the unique ability to mold armaments and protective gear out of
bone A bone is a Stiffness, rigid Organ (biology), organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red blood cell, red and white blood cells, store minerals, provid ...
-like material. The plot centers on one specific Gauna, Kudou Denji. It is licensed for French release by Glénat, Polish by
JPF JPF may refer to one of the following *Journeyman Pipefitter *Japonica Polonica Fantastica Japonica Polonica Fantastica, also known as JPF, is a Polish manga publisher. It is located in Mierzyn near Szczecin, Poland. The founder of JPF is Shin Y ...
and English by
Viz Media VIZ Media LLC is an American manga publisher, anime distributor and entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ M ...
.


Plot

Sometime in the future, humans have destroyed Earth's environment and are forced to live in cities connected only by a single highway and many tubes. However, some humans have mutated and become White Gaunas, a species which poses a threat to mankind. A group of scientists foresaw this dystopian situation years before. In an attempt to preserve humanity's future, they produced a number of
time machines ''Time Machines'' is a 1998 studio album by English experimental group Coil, originally released under the one-off project alias Time Machines. The album was created under the premise of psychedelic drone pieces named after corresponding halluci ...
powered by
nuclear plants A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...
called mausoleums. Each time machine can send humans to a distant future, thus ensuring the survival of the human race. They also use the collective energy from these plants to shift all White Gaunas on Earth at the time to a separate dimension. The scientists eventually entrust knowledge of all this to the 4th Eon Group (4th Chronicle Group), tasked to ensure at least a pair of humans can escape into the future. However, White Gauna mutation is still prominent, and White Gaunas consume the remaining humans. People begin to fight over the time machines and the mausoleums in desperation. Due to all the chaos, all the mausoleums are destroyed except for one. The 4th Eon Group is wiped out, but not before they upload remnants of their memories and personalities onto the computers embedded in the Raven, the Skull Man, and the Stick. Moreover, the Observation Bureau (Kagen House) is created to safeguard the true purpose of the Mausoleums so as to prevent further conflict. Hundreds of years later, to counter the White Gaunas, the Observation Bureau study the White Gaunas and engineer a human-Gauna hybrid, known as Black Gaunas, which have the abilities of the White Gaunas yet retain their human minds. Two children, Denji and Nayuta, are used as test subjects. Nayuta is the first to be experimented upon, and a control device is implanted in her. However, before they could implant the other control device, Denji escapes, killing people in the process. A few years later, Tadohomi engages Denji's help in eliminating the first White Gauna before more casualties occur. Denji complies but is wounded in the process. Sakijima tracks down Tadohomi and arrests her after Denji's body is found at the scene in the aftermath of the battle with the White Gauna. At this point, Sakijima is oblivious about the Observation Bureau's existence. Meanwhile, the Observation Bureau sends Nayuta as a Black Gauna to bring Denji back to HQ by taking advantage of Denji's wounded state. The boss of the Observation Bureau feels that Black Gaunas are untrustworthy; to him, Black Gaunas are monsters akin to their White cousins. Sakijima is ordered by his bosses in the Ministry to release Tadohomi. At this point, he starts becoming suspicious of the Observation Bureau and decides to dig up the truth. Another White Gauna spawns, but this time it is able to consume humans before the Bureau takes action. At first, they sent a squad of humans, but when this failed, they sent Nayuta to destroy the big White Gauna. However, a humanoid White Gauna appears and duels with Nayuta. After a battle between the two, Nayuta wins the victory - a few seconds after fatally stabbing the White Gauna, Nayuta falls dead. Because she is telepathically linked with her twin Ayuta, any damage sustained by Nayuta is also manifested in Ayuta. Meanwhile, the cop Sakijima gains information regarding the 4th Chronicle Group and the Gaunas from a colleague who was sent to talk with an old man who is in charge of the archives. With more information, Sakijima moves to Kegen Hall for a confrontation. His colleague is shot down by a Kegen Hall security guard whom Sakijima then kills. Sakijima meets Tadohomi who is attempting to rescue her childhood friend, Denji. just as she is about to get killed by a team of Kegen Hall guards, Sakijima helps her out and they both enter the room where Denji is being held. Then, a revived Ayuta awakes and mutates into a White Gauna. Denji fights Ayuta while Sakijima and Tadohomi flee on a helicopter. The successors to the 4th Chronicle Group's memories seek to activate a missile weapon they believe is capable of killing the Big White Gauna if it hits the spinal cord. Ayuta, now a White Gauna, attacks them and Denji fights her off, which the Raven and the Skull use as an advantage. When the missile is primed and the Big White Gauna is in sight, the Skull is still hanging onto the missile, trying to attach the hostless black Gauna to the projectile. Raven has no choice but to fire the missile along with him in hope of killing the Big White Gauna. The missile hits and the Big White Gauna falls to his death. However, the nuclear reactor is beginning to fail, and the Forbidden Cage appears due to insufficient energy to dimensionally shift all White Gaunas. A White Gauna attacks the helicopter, which crashes. The Stick and the Raven guide Tadohomi and Sakijima to the House storing the time machine. The Raven is killed by Ayuta, but Nayuta appears in the nick of time and kills her sister. Tadohomi and Sakijima escape into the House just as an explosion seemingly destroys Nayuta. With the help of the Stick, the duo activate the time machine. Many years later, the rest of humanity has been killed off either by the White Gaunas or by infighting. The world is an empty landscape, and lush greenery has taken over the House's rooms. Tadohomi and Sakijima run out of the House and look up into the sky. Two Black Gaunas, revealed to be Denji and Nayuta, continue to battle with the White Gaunas, stranded in a separate dimension.


Reception

The manga was nominated for an
Eisner Award The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books, sometimes referred to as the comics industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards. They are named in ...
in the category " Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia" in 2019.


References


External links

* {{Ultra Jump 2005 manga Biorobotics in fiction Genetic engineering in fiction Seinen manga Shueisha manga Tsutomu Nihei Viz Media manga