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Dragon Head
ドラゴンヘッド (Doragon Heddo)
Genre	Psychological horror
Manga
Author	Minetaro Mochizuki
Publisher	Kodansha
English publisher	Tokyopop
Other publishers: Pika Édition Glénat España Planet Manga
Demographic	Seinen
Magazine	Young Magazine
Original run	1995 – 2000
Volumes	10
Live-action film
Director	George Iida
Producer	Takashi Hirano
Composer	Misia
Released	August 2003
Anime and Manga Portal

Dragon Head (ドラゴンヘッド, Doragon Heddo^?) is a post-apocalyptic disaster manga by Minetaro Mochizuki. It was published by Kodansha in Young Magazine from 1995 and 2000 and collected in ten tankōbon volumes. It is licensed in English by Tokyopop, with Volume 10 released 2008-04-01.^[1] In 1997, the manga won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.^[2]

The series was adapted as a live-action movie written and directed by Jôji Iida, released in Japan in August 2003. It starred Satoshi Tsumabuki and Sayaka Kanda.^[3]

Plot

Arc 1: Escaping the tunnels

Teru Aoki (青木 輝, Aoki Teru) is riding a train towards Tokyo after a school trip. Some kind of disaster occurs which disables and partially destroys the train inside a tunnel of which both ends are blocked. When Teru wakes up, he finds that all his classmates and teachers are dead, and that he is in the tunnel, which is oddly warm.

Eventually he finds Nobuo Takahashi (高橋 のぶお, Takahashi Nobuo), who is already going crazy, and Ako Seto (瀬戸 憧子, Seto Ako), who is unconscious and wounded. Teru gives what medical attention he can to Ako, who wakes up after several days. The two of them move some supplies outside of the train, and live there rather than in the train.

Nobuo continues to go mad and becomes convinced that there is something in the darkness. He kidnaps Ako and paints her, and mutilates the body of a teacher he disliked as a 'sacrifice' to the darkness. Ako flees. Teru, meanwhile, finds an escape route through a ventilation shaft.

Teru returns in time to stop Nobuo from killing Ako. Another earthquake hits, and Nobuo flees into the darkness as his fear fully takes over. Teru and Ako escape through the ventilation shaft.

Arc 2: Searching for allies

The two surface in a water-treatment plant, which is deserted. The landscape is covered with dust and a black cloud hovers over everything. A radio broadcast on TV reveals that there is much danger in Tokyo, and that most cities have been taken over by looters. There appears to be no functioning government.

Teru and Ako follow a shadow of a figure and find more teenagers, who give them supplies. The teenagers say they are going to Tokyo to see what's going on. Teru and Ako wish to go as well, to find their families, but after they see the teenagers sacrifice cattle and draw strange religious markings, they decide to go by themselves.

They are almost killed in a mudslide, and then see military helicopters overhead. They then find a small town that is completely deserted. Teru, while Ako is elsewhere, notices a helicopter and goes to investigate.

The helicopter is crewed by Captain Nimura (仁村), pilot Iwada (岩田), and crewmen Yamazaki (山崎) and Ōike (大池). Nimura explains that they are deserters and are looking for supplies, as well as girls. Yamazaki goes into town to look for a fuel source. The others unpack their weapons.

Nimura tells him they can't help him unless there's a girl with him, and Teru flees. Ōike and Nimura chase Teru.

Yamazaki finds Ako, who attempts to find Teru to tell him about the helicopter, because she doesn't know he already saw it.

Iwada gets a message on his radio from Tokyo that sounds like it comes from a death cult.

Nimura knocks out Teru, but Teru quickly regains consciousness, who is now very scared and has 'given in to the darkness.' He finds Ōike, after the soldiers separate, and kills him with a Molotov cocktail barrage.

Yamazaki attempts to rape Ako, but Ako beats him up, grabs his gun, and makes him take her to the copter.

A firestorm ignites. Teru and Nimura face off, and Teru comes to his senses and regains his sanity. Barricaded behind a firebreak, he and Nimura argue.

Ako gets into the helicopter with Iwada and they take off before the flames reach them. Yamazaki is burned alive.

Right before the firewall is destroyed, Ako puts the gun to Iwada's head and makes him fly back to rescue Teru and Nimura.

Arc 3: Izu peninsula

Because of wounds suffered in the town, Teru falls unconscious.

After flying into the black cloud and getting somewhat lost, the team ends up stopping for fuel on a cliff-side road. Iwada and Nimura go over the geography. Because the black cloud of ash is between them and Tokyo, they can't go straight there, so they decide to take a roundabout way through Izu peninsula. Iwada worries about the lack of fuel. Before they can gain much more, the road collapses and they have to fly away.

They land in Izu, and meet a woman. This woman (who is given no name) tells them that the destruction sent a tidal wave through the peninsula, and that while there is a main town, it's been taken over by looters and crazy people. She is a teacher with medical training and determines that Teru has a deadly infection and that the nearest source of medicine is the town.

Iwada stays behind to repair the helicopter, whose engine was damaged by flying through the black cloud. Ako and Nimura go to get medicine. Ako is given all the ammunition for their few remaining guns (most were destroyed in the burning town). They also have a radio to contact Iwada.

Ako and Nimura travel and find a group of murdered people, and then run into a boy and his friend. The friend says that insane people from the town are trying to kill everyone. The other boy walks into the campfire and burns his arm very badly, but does not seem to care. His hat falls off, revealing that he has scars all over his head.

The townspeople arrive, and a policeman shoots Nimura in the shoulder. Since Ako is carrying the ammunition, Nimura has none and runs to her. Once he loads his gun he shoots the policeman and leads the team away. The policeman is not dead, though, and leads the townspeople to the group. The scarred boy's friend and the policeman are killed and Ako, Nimura, and the scarred boy are captured and taken to the town. They learn that the peninsula is now an island, and one with no food or water. The townspeople say they are committing mass suicide, but they want everyone else dead first. They have already killed all the women and children. Nimura notes that these are the town leaders - police and city officials.

The trio runs to a large building filled with gasoline, which turns out to be the funeral pyre for the town. They escape and flee to the hospital, and Ako is forced to shoot a group of townspeople on the way there. In the hospital, the trio splits up. Ako finds the medicine they need.

The scarred boy mentions a certain painting believed to be important to the events, and calls himself Dragon Head.

The trio is caught. Nimura and Ako fight through a wave of people and escape on a motorcycle. The scarred boy is beaten into a bloody pulp by a townsperson, and mocks everyone for the fear they feel. Nimura explains that he looks out only for himself, but says that he's different from the townspeople—he's afraid to die, unlike them.

Meanwhile, a less-defeatist, small group of townspeople find the radio in the forest. They call Iwada and pretend to have hostages. Iwada flies to them and they invade the helicopter. He is forced to land, but while they argue over who gets to fly away he takes a rocket launcher and blows them away.

Ako and Nimura climb to the top of the funeral pyre building, just as the black cloud moves over the Izu Peninsula. Iwada rescues them. As nothing can even be seen from ground level anymore, a townsperson ignites the pyre and blows the building up. Somehow, the scarred boy had followed, and they see him on the rooftop -- on fire and showing no expression -- as they leave.

The helicopter lands back at the woman's home. She heals Teru. Teru and Ako agree to look for their families in Tokyo, and to remain together. Ako looks up the painting and sees that it's of Mount Fuji.

Iwada says he wants to go to Tokyo too, and also to see Mount Fuji. Everyone comes with except for the lady, who stays to rebuild. She says that it is possible to feel fear without giving into it.

Arc 4: Discovery

The group goes into the black cloud. They approach Mount Fuji and see that the ground is filled with lava. They wonder if it was an eruption, but when they get over Mount Fuji they see only a giant hole. Because of the darkness, they cannot see its bottom, even after flying into it. They theorize that a meteor hit Mount Fuji. They also see the remains of the air force group that Nimura deserted—it was hit by flying rocks and obliterated.

The group heads through the black cloud and lands on a ruined shopping mall. Ash is falling everywhere, and there is still no drinkable food or water—they still can only used canned and bottled supplies. The shopping mall soon collapses, and Teru is separated from the others.

When Teru wakes up, he finds that the helicopter crashed and that Iwada is dead. There is a note from Ako. He walks towards Tokyo.

Along the way, he encounters a bandaged man, who says that Tokyo is like Hell but he wants to go back, and then runs off a cliff, killing himself.

He finally arrives in Tokyo, which is utterly ruined.

Arc 5: Tokyo ruins

Teru finds a group of survivors lead by a researcher. The researcher says that everyone has given into fear. Teru notes that everyone in the room is horribly wounded. Apparently, they have been eating food with fear-negating properties, but in their desperation to feel something have been mutilating themselves. The researcher says that numbing oneself to fear only makes more of it. A figure that looks like Nobuo is seen, but his identity is unconfirmed. Also, more Dragon Heads are with the group.

Teru opts to leave the group.

A team of rescue soldiers lands, and is massacred by the group, acting under the direction of the researcher.

Teru finds his apartment building ruined but standing. Inside, he sees a note from Ako, stating that her family is dead and that she is at the school. There is no sign of his family.

The note tells him to go to the school. He does, and meets Ako and Nimura. Nimura pulls a gun and says he's taking Ako. He holds Teru at gunpoint, and Teru opines that without fear—either by being numbed to it, or just never needing it—life is much less. Nimura says that he saw the graves of Teru's family, and that his whole family is dead. Teru and Ako defeat Nimura and flee, leaving him alive.

Foreign soldiers storm Tokyo and are attacked by the survivor group. The researcher says that he helped bring the apocalypse along. A document indicates that several nuclear devices have gone missing in Tokyo, and that weirdly the entire Japanese government vanished almost instantaneously. It also says that other governments are similarly unavailable. The document states that no one seems to know exactly what happened, but that the military is dedicated to retrieving the nuclear warheads.

Teru and Ako see a volcano rise in Tokyo, as do Nimura and a Dragon Head.

Teru and Ako sit together and watch the volcano, and Teru reflects that the world is what you make of it, and that even with the world in ruins good or evil still both have chances to triumph.

Themes

The major theme in the books is fear. As the woman in the ruined village said, a balance needs to be found between feeling fear and giving into it. Giving into fear was Nobuo's prime vice, and the teenager survivor group. Numbing oneself to it was the problem of the Izu people and the researcher's group. Teru himself gives in to fear when Ōkie and Nimura beat him up, but recovers. At the end he realizes that one has to conquer ones own fear—still feeling it but not letting it rule him—before the world can be saved.

Another theme is mystery. It is never stated exactly what happened. The characters guess that a meteor hit Mount Fuji, but it seems that the researcher had something to do with it—perhaps by assassinating the Japanese government, or by use of the nuclear weapons. It is also not stated what condition the rest of the world is in—we learn that some of them have unavailable governments, but they seem to still have a working military. We do not learn any more than the characters.

References

External links

• Dragon Head (manga) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
• IMDB entry for the movie