Title: Mujina Into the Deep Vol. 1
Author: Inio Asano
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Dystopian, Action
Publication Date: February 18, 2025
The Story
Society has become micromanaged. Everyone carries with them a card that proves their citizenship and freedom, they all wear monitors that track their health and automatically notify the appropriate contacts for specific situations, and everyone over the age of 85 is deemed a burden and stripped of their human rights before being relocated to a special senior zone. What a wonderful world the future has become.
Although, senior citizens are not the only ones who are stripped of their human rights. Anyone can be that way, especially if they lose their rights card. When you lose your human rights, you are referred to as a Mujina. Because the ground is not safe for them, Mujina sticks to the rooftops. It is their safe haven. They can scale buildings with ease thanks to the advancement in footwear technology. A prototype shoe never made it to production for society but the design was stolen and modified so that Mujina can use them to easily get around the skyscrapers of the city.
Society deems Mujina a problem. While many may have their qualms with the way society today is molded and dictated, they fear Mujina may upset the balance and wish to have them eradicated. Mujina, on the other hand, are perfect for shady underground work such as assassination. This is where Ubume comes in. She is a 30-year-old Mujina who is fabled throughout the city for her high-level assassination skills; however, when an online streamer turned Mujina named Tenko decides to get her own hands dirty, one of Ubume’s jobs ends up in failure. In her line of work, that means death. After being treated by an underground doctor, she meets Terumi, the head of an independent gaming studio who is seeing the doctor to have his Covid treated.
Traveling with Ubume is a 15-year-old girl named Juno who was caught in the crossfire of Ubume’s failed mission. Terumi agrees to harbor them; however, it’s not long before Ubume is tracked down. Terumi asks Nive, the person who tracked down Mujina, to get Juno a new rights card; however, it would cost 800 million yen. Ubume agrees to pay for the card by, essentially, doing jobs for free. After all, it’s not like she has a choice. It’s either do this or die.
Characters
We are introduced to a lot of characters in this opening volume so let’s dig in!
First up is Ubume. She is an assassin with a legendary reputation. She seems to be highly skilled; however, when she is sent on a mission, she isn’t counting on Tenko being there. Her involvement caused her mission to fail. In the world of Mujina, if you fail, you die… so, naturally, she went on the run. Just because she’s a Mujina, it doesn’t mean she’s special or inhuman. She’s a human like everyone else and has feelings. She doesn’t know much about her past nor can she remember anything about her teenage years. Terumi chocks it up to a case of amnesia. There is a lot that is shrouded in mystery about her which is a good sign because that means different pieces will open up over time giving her story the slow-burn treatment!
Next up is Terumi. As aforementioned, he is the head of an independent gaming studio; however, he is under a lot of stress because of a tight deadline and a bunch of young kids on his staff who value things like freedom, PTO, and mental health over their jobs. Terumi, on the other hand, is sick of society and just wants to die. He even thought about committing suicide until his wrist monitor sensed it and alerted him to take the necessary steps to prevent self-harm. Even when he catches Covid, he needs a quick-fix solution so that he can make his deadlines for the game he’s working on. He’s a man who is trapped in a world from which there seems to be no escape. He’s also apparently lonely because he has no trouble taking Ubume and Juno in and harboring them. Despite this grim view of his life and society, he does have a heart… kind of an odd paradox in a character but it works.
Juno is a girl who got mixed up with a prostitution ring. She ends up having her “employer” confiscate her rights card. Her job was to please the leader of a rock band, the Jersey Devils. When Tenko and Ubume show up and battle over their assassination target, Juno gets mixed up in everything. She realizes that Ubume is trying to protect her and she becomes attached. Eventually, she ends up at Terumi’s place. Juno is just an innocent girl who gets mixed up in things because she feels that she has no other choice. There are some clues that she gave about a troubled past such as kids at school burning her and not wanting anything to do with her parents. More clues are left to be unraveled!
Next, we have Tenki, who is also a Mujina and a social media influencer. She’s very abrasive, doesn’t mince her words, has a high horse attitude, and doesn’t mind the random lewd act every now and then. In fact, thinking about Mujina turns her on. I think that’s all you need to know about her type of character. Being a Mujina, she’s new to the scene but she has a ton of skill as evident in her battle against Ubume. Not only going toe-to-toe with her but scoring the kill on Ubume’s target in the process was clever, sneaky, and just dirty. She obviously doesn’t have any respect for rules or other Mujina but she’s not as dumb as she looks. That cleverness is going to be a powerful weapon that makes her a dangerous adversary.
Lastly, we have Sueichi who I thought was just going to be a random side character but towards the end of the volume, he became a little more important. He’s someone who works at a brothel that Terumi frequents. At first, he was supposed to be just that but when Terumi collapsed on his roof due to overwork, he had the brothel listed as his emergency contact so Sueichi stopped by to check up on him. He becomes a little enamored with Juno since they are around the same age and gets suckered into buying her clothes and necessities… on the pretense that Terumi is going to pay him back. Outside of being a hype machine for a brothel, he seems like a normal kid. A little straightforward but still a normal kid. It will be interesting to see how he fits into the story from here.
Final Thoughts
I’ve been looking forward to this series simply because it’s from Inio Asano, my favorite mangaka. That doesn’t mean I’m instantly going to give it five stars, though. Compared to his other works, this one started a little bit on the weaker side of things, although, when I say that, I don’t mean to imply that the first volume was bad. I enjoyed it very much but it seemed as if Asano tried to go the Ryohgo Narita route of creating different characters and giving them different stories only to intersect them later but chose to intersect them right away.
Starting off with Ubume and getting to know her, then to Terumi, Juno, then Tenko, it seemed as if we were going to be following these characters for a while. I would have loved to have done so… to get to know them a lot better before cleverly tying their stories together; however, despite that not happening, putting them together to establish the main cast straight away has its benefits, too. Besides, with the main cast assembled we were afforded the opportunity to get straight into the main plot of Ubume redeeming herself in her employer’s eyes and regaining their trust.
In addition to that, we also established that Tenko is, possibly, the main antagonist of the series, or at least Ubume’s rival. It’s quite obvious that these two are going to cross paths again and with Tenko getting the upper hand in their first meeting, the score needs to be settled at some point. The question is how far is Tenko going to fall just to best Ubume once and for all? With Tenko’s personality, I can see her as someone who becomes a bit unnerved and obsessed with her.
Still a great start despite it lacking the “mystique” that Aasno is known for when starting off a series but it did have his signature gritty look at life by depicting a dystopian-style society. That’s one of the things I love about his work. Time will tell if this series hits the same notes as others before it but I can see the seeds planted that say that it could.
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media
