To say fantasy manga is having a bit of a moment right now would be a bit of an understatement. While there’s no harm in having more fantastical tales about witches, elves, and dungeon crawlers, sometimes you need a speculative sci-fi manga to spice things up. Viz Media’s Lynx aims to fill that void with a cyberpunk tale about a no-nonsense detective and her talking cat sidekick.
Lynx, written by Samuel Sattin (Wolf Walkers) and illustrated by tokitokoro (Jeff The Land Shark), is a neo-noir mystery thriller whose vibes are in a similar register to Blade Runner, with a touch of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto. Its official plot synopsis is as follows: Lynx Takuma is standing still. A bio-enhanced detective, Lynx knows what she’s meant to do, keeping the peace alongside her reckless-but-trusty partner Task and her crime-fighting, talking cat Skua in one of the last cities after climate disaster. But ever since Simone… Well, she’s not thinking about Simone. Or about anything beyond the next day, and the next, and the next… Until she sees something impossible—something that looks like an angel… If the talking cat and forlorn cyber detective duo with some Sapphic baggage piqued your interest, io9 has an exclusive preview excerpt from Lynx for you to check out and see how their dynamic works in action. © Samuel Sattin/tokitokoro/Viz Media © Samuel Sattin/tokitokoro/Viz Media © Samuel Sattin/tokitokoro/Viz Media © Samuel Sattin/tokitokoro/Viz Media © Samuel Sattin/tokitokoro/Viz Media In tandem with an exclusive excerpt, io9 also received an advance copy of its first volume from Viz Media, which we read and have a brief review of what we liked and what left us wanting more. Whenever one picks up a new sci-fi anything, odds are you’ll be front-loaded with world-building with tons of lingo and terminology delivered in cluttered ways before you get a real sense of its characters as characters rather than walking exposition dumps. That’s not the case with Lynx. Its first volume drops readers directly into its post-apocalyptic city of New Borealis as if it’s any other day in Lynx’s life. It takes about halfway through reading the first volume of Lynx for it to highlight what makes its brand of sci-fi singular. In contrast to other sci-fi series that draw a line early about where their stories are going, Lynx takes its time establishing a sense of normalcy in its world before kicking it off its axis. Along the way, readers are treated to naturalistic dialogue among Lynx, her overbearing boss, her sassy cat sidekick, and her doleful inner monologue as she makes sense of her past and present. In that way, reading Lynx feels less like taking out a notepad and jotting down terms for a pop quiz and more like playing the role of an anthropologist wiping away the dust from topics Lynx no longer has a bone to pick with and assembling the full picture of the world she inhabits in real time.
