Long before manga publisher Viz dope-slapped American pop culture with the juvenile juggernauts Pokemon and Naruto, they gave us the racy Crying Freeman. From 1986, this is a comic series that sits like a juicy stromboli among the publisher’s more recent, fruitier offerings.

In other words, it’s full of stuff that’s really bad for you: people get shot point blank and back-flip amid fountains of blood, people get THUNKED in the chest and forehead with knives at breakneck speed, and people get prodigiously naked–on just about every other page.

Then again, “Everything bad is good for you,” says science writer Steven Johnson. Even better, beneath the late 80s brutality is a narrative that’s not merely good, but an education in super-charged excellence. Thank the talents of writer Kazuo Koike and artist Ryoichi Ikegami.

Their character, an attractive young potter named Yo Hinomura, is an assassin of breathtaking perfection. After a roll of incriminating photos are dropped into one of his clay pots during an exhibition, the 108 Dragons (or Chinese mafia) try to buy him off. He refuses. They then kidnap him and use post-hypnotic suggestion to turn him into a killer.

His trainer, the aged Tigress, says that, “an assassin who wins the hearts of women will succeed forever.” Not a hard task when you’re the cut, boyish Yo Hinomura. We meet him in Hong Kong, chasing gangsters through a wooded area. When he aerates them, they tumble kinetically in their white suits as if John Woo himself commanded it. Ikegami also renders all scenery (trees, building interiors and exteriors, and cars) with the technical flawlessness common in most crime manga (the raffish Gunsmith Cats comes to mind).

Alas, Hinomura cries after making a kill because his body isn’t his own… until he learns that the gorgeous Emu Hino has witnessed his work. She was painting outdoors when the gore spilled, and now must die herself to maintain Hinomura’s cover as the 108 Dragons’ premier killer.

We’ll revisit that scene once the kids are in bed. First, we get Shudo Shimazaki, leader of the Japanese yakuza, waltzing into police headquarters to ask for protection against the Chinese gang. His logic is simple: the Chinese are worse than his people because they’ve taken over the world’s drug trade from the Italians. Shudo prohibits the yakuza from using or distributing drugs, and tells the cops, “That I must now place my safety in your capable hands. HA HA HA.”

Hilarious, I know–right up to the part where Crying Freeman barges in on the meeting, shoots two cops in the throat and then Shudo in the skull. This happens at the very end of the first of eight books (all ad-free and sixty pages), and it is physically impossible not to read the next one immediately.

Such is the magic of manga, no? Occasionally. I usually loathe black and white, since color tells its own story. Ikegami opens each of several shorter chapters with deeply-rendered establishing pages. His work with shadow and contrast is stunning, though some scenes (like those with our protagonists mooning over each other) can seem flat.

Funny, since Hinomura finds a painting of himself, holding a knife and crying, in Emu’s home. He empties the frame and then waits for her inside it, three-dimensionally menacing. “Before you kill me,” she says, “could I ask you one favor?” He answers, “Yes.”

The next few pages show her putting on make-up and dressing in traditional wedding attire. Then, sprawling on the bed, “I am still… a virgin. Before you kill me… would you make love to me?” This is followed by a further confession of loneliness, leaving Hinomura with only one reply: “I have never made love either.” Ka-BOOM.