'Winner of the Golden Comics Awards and a standout of Taiwan’s rising comics scene, Yan Vol. 1 is a haunting, genre-bending journey from master storyteller Chang Sheng—creator of Oldman and The Hidden Level. In this stunning first volume, the echoes of Peking Opera performances 30 years past linger in the shadows of a story that begins in tradition and spirals toward a dark, speculative future. The tale unfolds across eras—starting with a tragedy in the richly detailed world of late 20th-century Taiwan, stepping into the present day, and glimmering with the foreboding rise of a dystopian tomorrow.
'Declared dead in prison records, Yan Tieh-Hua mysteriously returns to Taipei, reigniting the investigation into a decades-old massacre—her own family’s. As she carves a bloody path toward vengeance, Detective Lei is drawn into a chilling spiral of cold cases, supernatural events, and impossible truths. Alongside Yan is Higa Mirai, a young Go prodigy with the uncanny gift of precognition, adding eerie weight to every move made. With sharp moral tension, brutal action, and a uniquely Taiwanese swagger, Yan is more than a mere quest for revenge—it’s a vision of justice that questions what lies beneath our choices, and what might come after humanity loses control.'
The very first thing that anyone is going to notice about Yan is that it's not your average manga book. I was surprised when I was sent my copy that the package it arrived in was so big, until I opened it and saw why. Yan is twice the size of a regular manga release, with physical dimensions more in line with western graphic novels. Picking up a manga that was this size felt almost jarring, it made the book feel like it was something a little bit special; which along with the brightly coloured yet elegantly presented cover, made the book feel different before I'd even opened it. Upon opening it, however, I became even more impressed, as the size of the book makes the artwork inside Yan hit different. This is not a small story, it has huge scope and big ideas, and the presentation makes the artwork inside feel bigger than life, and almost cinematic.
Yan opens with a bold introduction, one that's so surreal and disorienting that it can't help but to draw you in. A woman wearing Peking Opera clothing and make-up is performing a live stream in a run down building, acting out a scene from a play. However, it soon becomes apparent that there's more to this than some simple viral internet stunt, as we see that she has a man tied to a chair. When the scene is over, the woman pulls out a gun, and executes the man live on the internet. She then identifies herself as Yan Tieh-Hua, before the scene cuts to a close. The opening is so strange, and so shocking that you have to know more, that you need to know who this woman is any why she just murdered a man. Unfortunately, these answers are far from simple.
From here the book jumps backwards in time 30 years, where we see a teenage Yan Tieh-Hua performing the same scene in her family's opera company, acting alongside her mother this time. Unfortunately, the play goes a little off the rails, Yan and her mother fight (physically), and the entire set falls down. It's a disaster, and it results in Yan being grounded and unable to spend time with her friends outside of school. On her way home one day soon after, Yan gets a strange feeling that something isn't right, and races home to find her entire family has been brutally murdered. Stranger still, we then see through news reports, that Yan admitted to the killings, and is sent to a secure facility; one that in the present is a pile of rubble.
The facility, and everyone inside, were destroyed, yet Yan Tieh-Hua is walking the streets, alive and well, and younger than she should be. Thus begins a mystery that will see a retired cop coming back onto the force to try and find answers, a mysterious girl who can see into the future, an ancestral spirit who can possess origami, a secret military conspiracy, time travel, and Yan on a super powered mission for revenge. Yan is a book that's many things at the same time, it's a science fiction story, a mystery, an action revenge narrative, and a story about trauma all rolled into one. And Cheng Sheng manages to make it all work brilliantly.
One of the books main strengths is that Sheng draws you into the expansive narrative very slowly, giving you the extra pieces of the puzzle at an almost leisurely pace. At first it feels like a standard revenge story, where we're following Yan as she tries to find out who killed her family. Then we see that she's talking to a possessed piece of folded paper. It's a little surprising, but you just go with it. Then she's jumping from building to building and fighting soldiers like she's in The Matrix and you just accept it because it's cool. But then you realise that now there's someone who can see the future, there are giant mecha robots, and some mysterious person/robot who seems to be travelling through time. By the time you realise just how fantastical the book has gotten you're already committed to the story and those who have come to the series expecting a realistic revenge story will be on board for all of the wonderful madness Sheng has given us.
The art also helps with this. I mentioned before how the book feels almost cinematic, and there are multiple pages without dialogue, where we get given huge half page panels showing the city at night, or of soldiers charging out of a troop transport, or even at times artwork that stretches across both pages. You can't help but stop reading and just stare at these pages, almost in awe that Sheng is presenting such a detailed, gorgeous story that feels like it needs the larger page size to really show off just how good it is. I don't think every manga would benefit from being this size, but Yan definitely does. It makes it feel grand in a way that suits the story that's being told.
By the time I reached the end of the first volume I literally swore out loud because it was ending. Not only does the book end in such a place that it makes you really want to keep reading, but I was sad that the experience itself was over. I wanted to keep looking at Sheng's artwork, I wanted to gaze at each page and lose myself in it.
I've gone through Yan multiple times, most of them not even engaging with the story, but just staring at the art and soaking up the vibes that Sheng was creating. I think that Yan is going to be one of those series that as soon as I see the next volume is out I'm going to be grabbing it without even needing to consider it. Yan is a unique, beautiful, and awe inspiring book that more people need to discover.
Yan: Vol 1 is on sale now from Titan Comics.
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