Polite Dissent

Ray contains themes common in many other popular adventure manga: a hero with a unknown past, an evil conspiracy, a mysterious benefactor, beautiful girls, beautiful boys, and scenes of all-out action. It adds a strong dose of medicine to these ideas to freshen up the storyline. It’s not great art or realistic medicine, but it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s just an enjoyable escapist manga.

Volume 2 pretty much picks up where the first volume left off. Ray was raised in a hidden “organ farm” — destined to be the source of some rich aristocrat’s transplanted organs. As a young woman, her eyes were surgically removed and transplanted into someone else. Later, she was rescued from the farm — but she doesn’t know by whom — and given a set of new eyes: special eyes with x-ray vision. With these eyes and her incredible medical skills, she has become a renegade surgeon, fighting the shadowy organization that runs the organ farm and helping the downtrodden (or at least those downtrodden in need of surgery).

In this volume, Ray learns a little more about her past. She reconnects with several other children from the farm. Blue was introduced in the first volume, and now a young girl named Red Ribbon shows up as well. But all is not as it seems, and both of Ray’s friends hold potentially devastating secrets. In addition to new friends, a new villain also appears. He is an evil scientist who actively hunts Ray down rather than just waiting for her to show up and destroy his labs. He is everything a good villain should be: handsome, clever, and evil all the way through.

And then there’s the surgery. Every chapter features some manner of amazing surgery. The most dramatic are a hand that must be amputated to save a young boy from a bomb, and a bullet that is removed during delicate surgery atop a Ferris wheel.

Each chapter is about a different patient. Some of them tie into and advance the overall storyline, but many are unconnected chapters that just tell a simple story. The best chapters in the book are two of these independent stories. The Power…To Believe tells of Chieko, a teenager who for the past year has developed sudden lacerations, bruises, and fractures for no apparent reason. They seem to be getting more severe so Ray and her friend BJ (who is a dead ringer for that other famous manga renegade surgeon, Black Jack) track down the source of Chieko’s ailment. The ending is clever, but quite twisted. Blood is about a simple small town factory manager. He just wants to design the most efficient factory possible. He suffered a small injury at work that should have been minor, but it keeps bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. Will he be able to finish his new design before he dies, and can Ray do anything about it?

Ray is an enjoyable adventure manga with strong medical overtones. If either of these appeal to you, then Ray is a good choice. It’s over the top and more than a little unrealistic, but that’s what makes it such a good read.

And it once again showcases a great martial arts fight scene. No nurses this time, just a mysterious person in a bear costume.

My review of Ray, Volume 1

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