Hen Kai Pan is a comic that finds a bleak but beautiful poetry in humanity’s end

Illustration: Eldo Yoshimizu

Eldo Yoshimizu is likely more famous in the art world for his sculpting, but debuted in comics in 2016 with Ryuko, exhibited in a gallery before going into print. That manga, about a young, raven-haired yakuza, was reminiscent of the work of famed Italian comics artist Guido Crepax, particularly his signature character of Valentina, with similar line work (that also evoked the styles of Monkey Punch and Kamimura Kazuo). His latest work, in contrast, explores cosmotheism—an older version of pantheism later renamed to avoid affiliation with far-right, nationalist politicians.

Hen Kai Pan (All In One) is a starkly bleak adjudication of humanity’s relationship with the Earth. In the book, Earth has five guardian spirits, whose names, like Asura and Pemajugne, are derived from world faiths, primarily priestly figures in Eastern religions. Fed up with humanity’s mistreatment of the planet, the guardian spirits decide to carry out an ultimate judgment—only to discover they have different visions of what this judgment will be, which results in conflict. At the heart of this struggle is Asura, a guardian expected to become the Spirit Of War, but presently subservient to Nila, the most destructive guardian. The results are bleak but staggering.

Though not born of the pandemic, Hen Kai Pan’s production was already underway during the first COVID-19 outbreak. According to him, Yoshimizu doubted whether the world was in need of such a bleak book but—likely similar to many readers—thanks to the halt in capitalist production, during a nature walk one day, he saw a forest less polluted than usual. He realized that life continues without humans; it’s a perspective echoed in this book, which has no human principal characters. However, not unlike the Endless created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg, the guardians do possess human characteristics. The fact that these spiritual guardians display pride, ego, rational thinking, conflict, and manipulation—and can still still come to destructive conclusions—serves to reinforce this dire need to ask the uncomfortable question about whether humanity deserves to survive.

It cannot be stressed how truly bleak a work Hen Kai Pan is. The narrative treats atrocities—the violence of borders, nuclear crises, bombing campaigns in forested areas—as background detail to the larger horror of humanity. Yet it is in its art where the true emptiness lies. Yoshimizu’s previous books, and general art style, tend to feature hectic and intimate action, intensity lines, and cinematically busy pages. Not so, here.

Hen Kai Pan’s pages utilize copious amounts of white space in a manner reminiscent of modern poetry. Skies that should be cloudy are blank, and whole pages are devoted to large, human-less landscapes like tundras. Fans of Yoshimizu’s work will pick up on the sparse use of SFX in the book, considering his previous heavy application of them. (He discusses his oversight of the translation of SFX in a 2017 interview.) As the apocalyptic narrative unfolds, one might be reminded of the reason the Mesopotamian gods flooded the planet in the Epic Of Gilgamesh: too much noise.

That being said, Hen Kai Pan is not a wholly nihilistic work. Pantheism can be summarized as the belief that reality comprises the divine. If the book seems blasé about the eradication of humanity, it’s only because it subscribes to a view wherein humanity is not central to the universe, but just a repurposed specification of it. Neither is the art without warmth: All the spirits are drawn in moving, human ways, and there are frequent close ups of plant and animal life.

Most striking, however, is Yoshimizu’s use of water colors. Watercolor is the pervading mode of rendering in Hen Kai Pan, reminiscent of its use in the 1973 animated Japanese classic Belladonna Of Sadness. Though they are used to show the lingering effects of destruction, as with explosions, they are also used to show the wonder of reunification and how reality, being one, seeps into itself. Yoshimizu has created a work of tremendous power, one that, like its inhuman characters, finds value in wiping the slate clean to begin again.