 Hey everybody, welcome back to We Can Geek Them. Today it's a first impression, so on number five from Taiyo Matsumoto. Let's do it. Yeah, welcome back to the channel everybody. This is easily one of my most anticipated reads of 2021. I am in love with the premise of this book and I really wanted to check it out. And also mad prompts to the folks at Viz Media for putting out a stellar release, in my opinion, one of the best of the year as far as collected editions go. Really well built, wonderful presentation, oversized artwork, colored pages, insert fold-out poster. You even have the french flaps that go do a wraparound image around the actual manga volume. Really quality presentation here and you might remember from the early odds the company actually released the first two volumes but due to low sales it was cancelled. But however, 2021 is a whole another ballgame and I'm pretty sure it's going to sell well and it will be collected in everybody's manga library. So what the heck is number five from Matsumoto all about? Well, the story takes place in this sort of alternate world, this earth-like place that has a 70% harsh desert area. The rest of the world, you know, you got your snowy climate, you have sort of jungles and tropical paradises and stuff like that. But it's mostly a harsh desert and it kind of mirrors the Middle East in some way and you really have a bunch of eclectic random characters that you can't help but like and admire and be scared of at the same time. So at the start of the series we find out that essentially these sort of deity type characters create this rainbow council or brigade if you will and they're essentially these security guardians of sorts that are tasked with protecting the world. There are nine of them to be exact and each excel in different areas and they sort of represent the best of humanity in a way and they're sort of like super soldiers if you will if you want to talk comic books and at the start of the series we don't really know what we're going into but we do know that one of them specifically number five who's this expert marksman has sort of rebelled against the council and he has kidnapped the mysterious Matryoshka woman that so far for my read I don't really know much about her and I know that's going to be a plot point in later volumes later chapters and we're going to find out more about her so I'm really interested in that aspect. So number five kidnaps her from number one's Citadel and every member of the council has his own Citadel in different areas of the world and they all have a ton of followers and it's this whole organized structure that's pretty interesting because you have the council the rainbow council I think it was like six percent of the world's budget is dedicated to keeping this council alive and going with all the resources and all of that so when number five does this you know he rebelled he's going against his family if you will if you can call it that and the council acts immediately and sends one of their own specifically number nine to search after number five. Number five like I mentioned earlier is an expert marksman and is able to take out number nine killing him which causes an international incident and this manhunt begins to track down number five so essentially you have this action packed story with espionage elements and with uh you could say super heroics because these characters have special abilities uh some are deadlier than others others are pretty freaking creepy and others are just plain weird and that's a thing I like especially from a Matsumoto book because the art reflects that so freaking well and I'd love that the story can go from the silly and cartoonish look to something very gritty dramatic and action packed with an air of suspense and thriller as this manhunt is going on and you don't really pick a side at least from my first impressions you understand what these characters are doing and for example number five there are points in the story early on in these eight chapters that I just read with volume one where I don't necessarily find myself agreeing with his actions and then in other moments I don't agree with the council and what they're doing so it's a very objective look at the actions that these superpowered individuals are taking throughout the story you also have elements like uh Papa the creator I guess of the council who is vouching for the team against ongoing pressure from the media and different countries to sort of um police this council and ask is it really worth spending like the percentage that we're spending from the world's monetary budget on keeping these guys healthy and well fed and alive and all that stuff doing their own thing and you get sort of that political play of course it doesn't help that Papa's wearing a bunny suit but we'll save that for another day you can clearly see Matsumoto's inspiration and his preferred art for this manga really resembles Mobius and if you've read stuff like Incal for example you will see a lot of similarities in the backgrounds and styles of the characters and all that wonderful stuff on a first impressions basis I loved this opening introduction to this wonderful world I'm very much looking forward to seeing what is the actual plot and motive behind number five's actions to go rogue against the people that he knows best because they're sort of like the dysfunctional family think of yourselves like a little doom patrol if you will they're quite bizarre but yet they click so well together the art on this is phenomenal like I just said it goes from really cartoony and silly to serious and then to like psychedelic with wonderful splash pages and wonderful illustrations depicting this crazy world there are some scenes where you don't really I mean you understand that it's a dream but is it really and the way it's presented with the different animals and the the sun and the sky and all that stuff is pretty freaking wild I love so that's about it I'm looking forward to the rest of the series volume 2 comes out in a couple of months as of the recording of this video and this is going to be collected in four volumes total so of course once I'm done reading everything I will gladly come back revisit this and do a series a proper series review for number five but what about yourselves have you read this series already let me know in the comment section down below and if you haven't what are some of your favorite characters from a Matsumoto manga very interested in finding out guys as always thank you so much for liking commenting subscribing and being a part of a week in Geekdom it really does mean a whole lot thank you everybody god bless stay safe out there I will catch all of you on our next video