Historié Volumes 1-2 Digital Manga Review

A historical epic set in ancient times, Historié tells the story of Eumenes, a young man with quick wits and a vast destiny to fulfill. In time, he'll become a famed army commander and personal secretary to Alexander the Great—but the road to this glory is fraught with danger…

The digital edition of Historié volumes 1-2 was translated by Kevin Gifford, lettered by Darren Smith, and edited by Thalia Sutton.

A historical epic set in ancient times, Historié tells the story of Eumenes, a young man with quick wits and a vast destiny to fulfill. In time, he'll become a famed army commander and personal secretary to Alexander the Great—but the road to this glory is fraught with danger…

The digital edition of Historié volumes 1-2 was translated by Kevin Gifford, lettered by Darren Smith, and edited by Thalia Sutton.

Manga creator Hitoshi Iwaaki is best known for his hit manga series Parasyte, a supernatural horror story featuring bloodthirsty aliens who begin living in human bodies. Kodansha injected new blood into the ' 90s-era series with the premiere of its 2014 anime adaptation, with manga spin-offs and live-action series and films. So it may surprise you that, after Parasyte's success, Iwaaki shifted his focus to historical fiction. No aliens, no ghosts, but there's still plenty of gore to be found in the annals of the ancients.

He first dabbled in the single-volume Heureka in 2001, a story set during the Roman siege of Syracuse and follows a couple who seek refuge in the home of Archimedes. He followed up with Historie, beginning about 100 years earlier and focusing on Eumenes, a slave who will rise to prominence alongside Alexander the Great. At this point in the story, Alexander is far off in the distance. First, Iwaaki wants readers to appreciate Eumenes' journey.

The volume's opening chapters are its weakest, as we follow Aristotle and historian Callisthenes as they flee from Memnon of Rhodes, not long after lecturing that the Earth is a sphere. They travel briefly with Eumenes, who solves a problem by building a rudimentary waterwheel for his oarless boat. He soon separates from them and continues toward his hometown of Cardia, which is under Macedonian siege. These early chapters mostly provide a loose framework to introduce Eumenes' intellectual prowess to the audience and give perspective on the world he lives in. Here, we see people being killed in a blend of abject cruelty and stupidity as a woman is disemboweled in front of Hermias, one of Aristotle's followers, because the torturer believes she is his daughter. Memnon quickly points out that Hermias is a eunuch who has no daughter. So while the brutality lets readers know that the Persian Empire is an unforgiving place, it's only a few days' journey to find yet another simmering conflict.

Still, these early chapters can feel like a textbook rather than real dialogue, as Aristotle gives an in-depth explanation of his deductions about the Earth's shape based on observations of an eclipse, or when Eumenes explains how he is able to use cultural shame to gain access to Cardia despite the ongoing threats. However, the story shifts from Eumenes in Cardia to...child Eumenes in Cardia, and this portion is riveting, so much so that I wish the manga had opened here instead.

When we pick up with young Eumenes, he's the golden child. His father, Hieronymus, is a man of some stature in Cardia and is wealthy enough to have his own library for no other reason than a personal whim. Quickly, Eumenes' world shifts when a series of events (including a mass murder) lends cover to one of his father's adversaries, and Hieronymus is killed. Eumenes doesn't believe the supposed sequence of events, but the court case also reveals that everything Eumenes thought he knew about himself was a lie.

After reading both of these volumes, I immediately dove into looking up what historical records I could, which I hope a good fictional retelling will inspire in readers. Iwaaki has certainly done his homework, and while I couldn't corroborate everything he presents in these first few volumes, that could be because I need to dig a little more. His rendition of (who I believe is) Alexander the Great will look familiar to Fate/Zero fans. Otherwise, Iwaaki is surprisingly adept at creating a large cast of distinguishable, yet normal-looking characters.

The manga's art is a double-edged sword, though. Iwaaki's paneling and composition are straightforward, with little stylistic flourish. We rarely get panels from interesting angles or perspectives, which can make the reading experience somewhat clinical. It's not until Iwaaki wants to punch you in the gut that he changes up his composition. This happens most effectively during the slaughter in town, as the perpetrator rolls, dodges, and practically dances through offensive forces to kill each and every person who stands in his way of escape. The clinical approach is still there, but it works effectively in a horror setting to drive home how detached the killer is from the chaos.

Likewise, there were points throughout the volume where the translation felt perfunctory. It can feel stilted, like when a work tries to convey factual information without sounding like a natural conversation. I can't say for sure if this is the result of the translation or the original composition, as pulling off these kinds of "lore dumps" is incredibly tricky. You have to rely on your audience to pick up certain cultural traditions and related information through context cues, a practice that's been abandoned in film and TV at this point, but that's another frustration for another day.

Will I keep reading Historie? Yes! But I'll wait for Kodansha's print releases. You can read over 100 chapters on the K manga app now (volumes 1-2 contain chapters 1-18), but the digital currency requirement would cost me hundreds of dollars. If you enjoy historical manga like Orb: On the Movements of the Earth or Shin'ichi Sakamoto's Innocent, you owe it to yourself to try out Historie.