Japanese comics suffer from too often stifling the line of its authors under such a clear and precise inking that it struggles to still seem manual and alive. In its context, each publication of Q Hayashida acts as fireworks. Slutty, dense, populated by pencil strokes that “exceed” and sculpt each figure, the mangaka’s drawing constitutes a splendid and abrasive anomaly. After spending eighteen years (!) on Dorohedoro, whimsical and ultra-violent saga guided by a drawing impulse, she finally begins, with Dai Dark, a new series. Influenced and regularly associated with the video game industry for which she has collaborated in the past, Q Hayashida arrives with a book by dark fantasy space that offers a mischievous counterpoint to the tidal wave Elden Ring, small masterpiece of the genre whose gravity of each moment can seem overwhelming.
To populate the mephitic and seeping cathedrals which serve as a spatial framework for Dai Dark, the author summons the monstrous echoes of Hans Ruedi Giger or Tsutomu Nihei to better subject them to the outrages of ridicule. More than a story, the first volume sets a tone, halfway between the first degree of FromSoftware and the galleys of Monty Python or One Punch Man. A stone’s throw from becoming a pot of cannibalistic space pirates, the trepanned young hero of Dai Dark unleashes mad brutality against his attackers while unleashing absurd “tadam.” If this first volume suggests a delightful B series, it is because its author puts all her energy into developing a decorum with the utmost seriousness to transform it into a gigantic room for childish games. We sing bass “Flesh of darkness, come to me”, before chatting spaghetti with the Grim Reaper (aka “Death Delamort”). We imagined that this drawing monster that is Q Hayashida would calm down a little after Dorohedoro, would move away from absurd gore to seek a broader form of respectability, a sign of maturity. Instead she drives the point home with a sneer. Great.