Hydra

Hydra (九頭竜) is a manga by Tetsuo Hara (原哲夫), written by Tadashi Ikuta (生田正), prepublished between 1997 and 1998 in Shueisha's Allman magazine. This one-volume crime thriller delves into the yakuza underworld and revolves around a devastating firearm, the Kuzuryu, whose name refers to the Hydra of Greek mythology. It was published in a magazine aimed at an adult readership, far from the Weekly Shonen Jump where Hara had made his name.

Synopsis

Yomi Kazuma, a former police officer, joins the Daikirin-kai, a criminal organization with ambitions to rule the Japanese underworld. Twelve years earlier, his parents lost their lives in a conflict involving the gang, and his sister broke down from the shock. Driven by a desire for revenge that he keeps secret, Yomi gets his hands on the Kuzuryu, a cursed pistol of terrible destructive power, to satisfy his resentment.

A weapon, a gang, an intimate wound

At the heart of the story is the PK99, a very large-caliber pistol nicknamed the Kuzuryu (九頭竜), originally designed as a military prototype intended to erase all traces of its targets: it pulverizes its victims by firing its shots in a spray of projectiles. Diverted to criminal use after the disappearance of its designers, it is nicknamed "the devil's weapon." It is this weapon that gives the work its title, the term 九頭竜, the nine-headed dragon, being a reference to the Greek Hydra. This weapon is what Don Ryuzaki Jintaro of the Daikirin-kai seeks to procure in large quantities to establish his dominance, placing Yomi at the center of a criminal mechanism of national scale. To this stakes is added an intimate wound: his sister Mamiko, placed in an institution since the family tragedy, has withdrawn into herself and no longer responds to the world, embodying the personal driving force behind his vengeance.

A dark and violent thriller

Hydra falls within the genre of the adult crime thriller. The story portrays the yakuza underworld and features pronounced graphic violence, characteristic of Tetsuo Hara's style during this period. The central weapon, the Kuzuryu, is depicted as an instrument of spectacular destruction, capable of pulverizing its targets in a single shot.