Pull up a chair! Bokurano is Ours and it’s time to crack this manga wide open. Our mission? To feed that beady-eyed child inside, hungry for a revelation. Lean back and enjoy the ride!
The manga opens with a panel of open sky. Although it is somewhat cloudy, our future is bright—with a chance of precipitation. This is a story of...wait for it...school children tasked to save the world! No need get NERVous: this fan-favorite IKKI title stands on its own.
As the first character turns toward the reader, we notice that his features are sketched clean and spare, his hair a uniform black, the background behind him an expressionless white. A visual testament of how a child's life begins as a blank slate, with his character just barely penciled-in and lacking the grey tones of experience.
With their slight frames, small facial features, and open expressions, our children look hopefully out to the horizon, toward an unknown future. Sandals and tank-tops expose slender limbs, an imagery of innocence that contrasts poignantly with the sharp appendages of the monstrous machine the children will pilot later. This pastoral beginning is a brilliant opening for a story that deals not only with the tragedies of human nature but with the fire of the human spirit.
Now: a cave exists in this realm of innocence and is discovered by the children. It is the dark locus of the birth of the game. Machi, who could be considered our Eve in this Garden of Eden asks her cohorts, "Wanna go check it out?"
The entrance to the lair is organic, like the husk of some terrifying kaiju monster. It beckons the children to jack in and play. Emotions run deep and shiver down their spines; something is terribly odd about this peculiar lair, yet fascinating all the same. Going from amusement to amazement, the children are drawn further inside, not knowing that they are also embarking on an incredible journey into the darkest recesses of human nature.
They walk into the cave of tech and shadows, into the belly of the beast. Inside, the cave is shrouded in darkness. Thankfully there is a light at the end of the tunnel, an unsettling electronic beacon in the organic void.
In the bowels of the cave is a nest of computers, consoles, trash, empty water bottles and empty chairs... The place is inhabited. The children look around, bemused that someone could actually live or work in such a dank environment. And then, behind them, a footfall on the rock, one that will forever make an imprint upon their lives. Kokopelli has arrived.
He blocks the only entrance and their only exit. His impish grin contrasts with the children's embarrassment. His affect is disjointed, his speech slightly, but strangely, off. There’s something inhuman about him, something that triggers the children’s instinctual unease. But then he asks the fateful question: "How would you like to play a little game?"
It is a question that requires no answer. They sign the contract by placing their soft, organic hands on a cold metallic plate. They announce their names: Waku, Kako, Daichi, Kodama, Kanji, Moji, Ushiro, Kirie, Nakama, Anko, Machi, Chizu, Komo, Maki. Kana, the youngest, is spared. Kokopelli ponders and blesses them by finally revealing his own name. With that, all is static, and the children are back on the beach, back in their seaside Eden, and wondering if it was all just a dream…
…until a strange shape appears over the ocean with its spidery weapons of fate, a daytime nightmare vision armored in an insect’s carapace. A two-page spread reveals the monster. A profile view reveals one light on its facemask. The pilot? Kokopelli. "Here it comes," he whispers.
—Professor Andrew MechKeon
