If we’re talking about comics, we all known where Pinocchio comes to mind, though indirectly, as “The God Of Manga” Osamu Tezuka was inspired by Disney’s adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s book, and wanted to create a “reverse 21th Centhury Pinocchio”, a robotic boy already created to be as close as possible to perfection. I really don’t need to introduce Astro Boy, do i?
Tezuka would eventually do his own manga adaptation of Pinocchio, which would be interesting, but maybe too obvious, so we’re not reviewing that or Astro Boy.
Nope, we’re going for something far more recent, and pay visit to what i feel it’s an underestimated country in terms of comics, South Korea, that while it did get inspired by Japan’s anime/manga style and legacy, managed to create something distinct or similar but possessing its own personality and soul, dubbed as “manwha” for shorthand.
Though one could be forgiven to think that mostly it’s a matter of where its coming from instead of the content itself, given we had many distincly “manga” series come out from european or non-japanese artists (an easy example is Tony Valente’s Radiant), and the more successful/publicized often are aimed to the same age demographic as shonen mangas, or belong to popular genre trends.
But for each “God Of High School”, we have more unique work, like Hyung Min-woo’s western horror themed Priest, inspired by Monolith Productions FPS game BLOOD.
While a number of manwha series were and are given print editions in many countries (including Italy and France), the most common way to consume and access manwha in both its country of origin and international is “the internetz” and sites like Webtoon.
Pinocchio-meter:
The premise of “Gepetto” is set in a dystopian sci-fi future, where the genius inventor that created androids, left behind a mysterious inheritance.
After the war between humans and androids ravaged the planet, forcing humans to survive in a sheltered/domed city to protect themselves from the androids, which are after Gepetto’s inheritance since they are beginning to break down and running out of time.
100 years after Gepetto’s death, a single blue-haired android (named Whale) is found lying inside Professor’s estate and finally activates, making both humans and androids struggle to get a hold of her artificial brain and its unique contents, as she may hold the key to Geppetto’s inheritance…
As you could expect, this doesn’t sound (nor it is) a faithful adaptation, but a sci-fi cyberpunk manwha that uses Pinocchio story as a base, drawing from both the original novel, by using many references that only readers of the Carlo Collodi’s book would known, and also technically from the Disney version, as the main protagonist is a female android named Whale, a reference to the Disney version as the animal that shallows Pinocchio (and Geppetto before that) is not a whale, but a “pescecane”, an antiquated italian term for shark.
And that’s actually the best way to describe how many surface elements are borrowed, since the series just uses a lot of names from the book, but it just that, names, often pinching them from ancillary or background characters, like “Rosaura”, one of the puppets that belong to Mangiafuoco’s circus/show, but then doing anything the author pleases with it, and admittedly there’s some deliberate use of certain names to further mistify those who have some real familiarity with the original tale, for the best i feel.
Because this was never trying to remake Pinocchio the book or the Disney movie in any faithful way, but was obviously intrigued to try and rework some elements from this classic story in a sci-fi context, in what its otherwise its own thin, heavily inspired by Pinocchio, but actually it’s more reminescent of late 80’s-early 90s manga, specifically there’s a certain Alita Battle Angel vibe, heck, more than that, between the discovery of Whale in a scrap heap by a human boy and Whale herself being amnesiac in her own way, there are indeed similarities.
Real Boy Ratio:
The “namesakes tango” continues when actually looking at the story, the characters, as in, this isn’t even trying to modernize the story but keeping the core and themes intact, Geppeto is a more typical “android war” type of sci-fi story, with the also expected obvious tackling of its themes, like, explaining of very basic theories that feel like the author just discovered them and excitidly wanted to put them into the story (see the Uncanny Valley, also a great album by Perturbator), regardless of how it would look to anyone else with a vague interest in cyberpunk sci-fi.
So don’t expect anything too deep or cerebral, though i do think it’s fairly clever to also use a part of the original fairy tale as a cryptic message to the inheritance, and i do believe the writing it’s overall fairly decent, definitely this manwha’s strongest suit, with fairly compelling characters, though it’s a case where you get more invested in the “villains” and secondary because what’s supposedly the main character it’s that kind of stoic silent protagonist that’s also amnesiac by design (in this case literally), powerful but also striving to resolve thing without violence if possible, designed to look cool but also a bit too moderate in terms of personality to be proper interesting.
And the “it’s a robutt” excuse doesn’t work, especially since other androids have more interesting characters arcs, Whale suffers from “barren protagonistitis”, functional but kinda bland, and she doesn’t get much better as the story progresses, heck, in the second season/part she’s arguably even worse.
Despite the mild start and its kinda lackluster protagonist, the series does improve as it goes on, still nothing amazing and fairly derivative of other cyberpunk anime/manga series, but it manages to be more intriguing than one would expect, especially in the latter part of the first “season” and onwards, so its end up being quite decent.
What doesn’t really improve much to any remarkable degree is the art, which is a bit of a problem for a visual medium, you know?
Character designs are decent, but in terms of lines, compositions and panels, Geppeto feels very basic, like it’s a first opus by a new artist, but that’s not true as Jewon Yeon the previous year worked on a horror anthology series, and i’m not dissing on him, the craftmanship here is competent, and its not even rough looking, if anything it suffers from the opposite, as it looks excessively “clean” and rigid.
While there’s nothing much wrong with it in technical terms… it’s just not very appealing or interesting from a visual standpoint, it’s pleasant enough to look at, art and composition does improve after the initial chapter, but even so there’s not much of a style to it, it’s functional and there’s no weird shit that makes following what’s going in the panels a mess, but it just lacks any proper “flair” to either the designs or the content of the panels.
Overall Evalution
In conclusion, while nothing amazing, Geppeto by Jewon Yeon it’s a decent sci-fi manwha (aimed more at a younger demographic, i would say), one that has very little to do with Pinocchio but also takes it as inspiration for many elements and namesakes (leading to a lot of well thought references), though the art and composition feel too basic, it’s not horrible to look at, the characters look quite fine, but it just begs there was some pizzaz to the aesthetic and the panels themselves.
It’s a shame because the writing and characters pull the manwha together above barren mediocrity, even if it isn’t the most tantalizing or stimulating comic book to look at.
This is one case where i think an animated adaptation by the right team would make the series justice and actually improve from the source material, as honestly i feel it kinda drags before hitting the mid-point of season 2 (it has been officially branded/organized as such), so yeah, the story ultimately could have used a bit of trimming in terms of chapter quantity.
And i guess the ending fits, somehow, even if it kinda leaves a mixed message when you stop to think about what it implies for more than a second.
On the other hand, i’m not really keen on discouraging others to give it a chance, , since – bears repeating – it’s officially free to be red on Webtoon, so if you’re curious i do say give it a punt, you might be drawn in more than you’d expect, maybe even binge the whole thing, like i did.
Wise Cafe (International) 