Kabuki vol 5: Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a continuation of both the story and the art development from Skin Deep. Skin Deep was shorter and more focused on one theme, Kabuki's imprisonment and Akemi's notes. Vol 5 is much broader, in length, in themes, in art styles.
The overall story sees Kabuki's attempts to escape with the help of Akemi. Towards the end of the book the Noh enter the facility, as we saw at the beginning of Skin Deep, and we finally learn Kabuki's fate.
Underneath this plot, Mack inserts many themes: most prominent are the sessions with the psychiatrist, who tries to get inside Kabuki's head. At first she manages to get her attention, and it almost seems like Kabuki might give in to her. However Akemi's arrival changes things, and her own story with her psychiatrist seems to inspire Kabuki and change her strategy with her doc. The way Akemi manages to overcome her doc was awesome, playing the doc's own tricks and making her an inmate. Just great!
Kabuki's character is a veiled version of Mack's persona, and to me the closest similarity is their level of understanding of the 6-7 area of knowledge: math, physics, psychology etc... (don't have the book in front of me now). Both Kabuki and Mack are prolific in these disparate areas: the doc explains that Kabuki's mind works like that. Mack also shows his many interests in the course of this book, explaining physics theories, or math equations, or many other topics. These are not necessary for the understanding of the plot, in fact they can be skipped altogether. However they are interesting, and they do explain the motivations of the characters.
Mack's art style is also very disparate, and he tries many neat experiments in this book. How can I not mention the double page fight between Akemi and Siamese, designed as a board game where each step sees a development of the fight ("Akemi kicks Siamese down, go 2 forward"). He also mixes color with black & white panels, his figures vary from expressionistic to photo realistic.
Don't be alarmed though, if you think this stuff seems too brainy or not for you, you also get the espionage/crime story, and what a great story. You'll get to the end of the book and wonder: who was that? What is going to happen now? What is she gonna do?
All these questions will be answered in future volumes.
