Fantasy Fix-up: Gleipnir
Trying a new format. A long time ago I read Gleipnir and was really disappointed with it. I didn't want to write a review that was just ten pages of me complaining. It seemed unproductive. Who would even care to read it?
In my mind, I had a lot of suggestions for the story that I think could make it better. I still didn't really bother to explore this. But now I've been in a writing mood recently and I think that this could be a way to talk about the story that isn't inherently negative and could even be ... interesting. If you like hearing rants about manga.
Starting thoughts on Gleipnir
I like body horror. There's something raw and basic about it that makes it captivating. Everyone can relate to human characters in stories about ghosts, wizards, magic, psychic powers, and other kinds of fantasy elements. But there is a comfortable distance. At the end of the day, we don't see ghosts or magic in real life. We do have fallible, human bodies. We do see animals and plants in Nature which have strange, wonderful, and even grotesque bodies. Seeing people bodies distort and the gore and guts surrounding that reminds us of our own physicality in the real world. Stories about zombies, human experiments, cyborgs, pandemics, and the like hit hard.
This works even better when combined with a near-future sci-fi story. In works like Bioshock or Deus Ex: Machina, the audience can easily imagine themselves and their own bodies in the setting in a way that is visceral and intimate. Genetic modification and cybernetic implants are happening now, today. Is Bioshock complete fantasy or a grim possible future? The audience wants to know more, to confirm that their fears are unfounded, and shockingly find that really they aren't.
The beginning of Gleipnir is so incredibly horrible and bizarre, while somehow feeling intimate and even logical. Suichi's body changes and he get stronger. His merging with Claire is obviously an allegory for sex, with lots of grinding and nudity and bodily fluids, and it feels twisted but innately understandable. Everybody gets that it's sexual, intuitively, there is no subtlety here.
Initially, the body horror of Gleipnir is certainly shocking, but we quickly lose that feeling of grounded intimacy. This is the thesis of my changes; we need to keep that.
Like most manga, the characters are young and immature and completely boring. If you are familiar with shounen or seinen at all, you could probably describe them without reading the manga. When the average age of characters is 15, you basically already know both the target demographic and the quality of the writing.
(The fan service, though, really marks this manga as being forgettable YA trash fodder. Single panels of women flashing their breasts are more annoying than sexy, especially when it makes zero sense within context of the story being told. Gleipnir prefers to have normal humanoid women just suddenly be naked during tense fights, in flashbacks, and when randomly at home... It's cheap and adds nothing.)
And so this will come as no surprise, but the main plot is rooted in teenage drama which is basically impossible for anyone over the age of 22 to relate to or even keep track of. The writing is immature as the characters. The exposition is downright nonsensical, and even the action is pretty shoddy. I had to re-read some parts multiple times to understand what the hell was even going on. Characters are introduced and then explained after the fact. Characters have full 180 degree personality swings and inconsistent behavior. What exists of a central conflict is absolute bullshit, and overall everything is just generally a mess. It feels like someone ad-libbed this story for their middle school writing contest after reading Animorphs and some William Sleator novels.
Problems with Gleipnir
We can throw away most of the plot without losing anything. Let's first focus on the themes of body horror.
Setting the hook deep. The body horror of Suichi's transformation is what hooks the reader first. But when it really counts, the reliance on body horror is cast away for superhero powers more grounded in mysticism and magic than biology. People turning into ghosts or reviving people from the dead or phasing through matter isn't true body horror. Everyone can understand how Suichi's muscles growing makes him stronger, or that Claire going inside Suichi is an allegory for sexual domination because her entire body is inside him and covered in his fluids. But how does changing someone's genes make them psychic, or talk to ghosts? We've completely 180'd our way into high fantasy. The audience may intellectually understand human being + alien powers = psychic, but they don't feel it the same way. To keep the manga thematically consistent, we need to keep up with mutations, transformations,
Better options? In my opinion, the Matous are the Cosa Nostra of Japanese fantasy body horror. They use magic which eats away at a person's flesh and soul, physically corrupting them and changing their body. Usually the vehicle by which they do that is magical bugs; how fucking wild is that! Matou Zouken has an ethereal Oogie-Boogie body that's actually a swarm of squirming, flying creepy-crawlies. Such a body would be a perfect fit for the Gleipnir universe and accomplish many of the same goals.
Of course no such character is introduced. There are references to insects and insect forms, but there's more of an emphasis on spirits and demons than bodily corruption. There's a noticeable lack of wings, tentacles, venoms, extra limbs, etc. on the friends of foes of the manga. There's even a character with crazy spider legs and webbing but the legs are mechanical! What seems more cohesive, someone sprouting carapace-d and haired legs from their back, or them suddenly having crane arms? The character design feel lazy and uninspired.
My recommendations
Emphasis on consumption and merging. Glepnir misses a big opportunity by making the merging of the main character's body a mechanic unique to him. I really wanted to see the idea of disparate organisms merging (via eating, molting, mating, or something) as a way of gaining strength to become a consistent mechanic. I was just waiting for us to discover a character that gets stronger via cannibalism but it never happened. Sex (exchanging of genetic fluids) would be another dramatic and thematically-consistent way to achieve this. (Again, Fate/Stay Night, which isn't even body horror, also picked up on this.) There's potential to carry such scenes past the physical superpowers and into forming emotional connections with the characters portrayed. The manga makes an attempt to build emotions and create tension between Suichi and Claire, but the concept is under-explored.