Akira Toriyama
Cowa!

“Cowa!”, meaning “Scary!”, is the first serialized manga created by Akira Toriyama after the conclusion of “Dragon Ball” in the late nineties. Comprising fourteen chapters, later compiled into a single volume, it tells a simple and funny story featuring three young monsters, Paifu, José, and Arpon, along with the grumpy ex-sumo wrestler Maruyama.

The plot, very straightforward and simple, utilizes the context of a journey, not new to the author, to delve into themes such as friendship and the encounter and understanding of the different. It presents a succession of bizarre situations where ordinary problems are solved with improbable tricks and improbable problems are resolved with ordinary tricks. The jokes and comedic skits are not forced and, although plentiful, they serve the story rather than being its main focus. There is also a near-perfect spontaneity of the characters as they deal with the strange and ridiculous situations characterizing their absurd world, ensuring the reader is never puzzled by plot developments or interactions among the protagonists that, in other contexts, would be trivial and ridiculous. The fairytale-like and childish atmosphere indeed envelops the story, making it likable even where it normally would not be. The round and soft drawing style greatly aids in this and markedly distances itself from the edgy style of the “Dragon Ball” finale, with which “Cowa!” has little in common. Certainly, there is no shortage of some fisticuffs, but these are mostly brief interludes far from tragic and dangerous, serving to add a bit more spice to the whole.

Of course, the adventure of the protagonists can only have a happy ending, although to be honest, this happy conclusion arrives a bit too soon; a few more pages wouldn’t have been unwelcome, even though the risk of unnecessarily dragging things out would have been strong. All in all, however, the manga achieves its goal: providing an hour of entertainment by taking readers into a world where the heart is lighter and bad thoughts more distant.

However, it seems that in Bat Cape the monsters get along with humans…