A mysterious Chinese group has made their presence known to Takashi, in the form of a dead body in the river. With this affecting other organ trafficking groups and involving the police, Takashi knows it’s all gonna get connected to Dr. Hayashi — who ends up meeting the Chinese group in person anyways! Between this, an ex-cop getting involved, and multiple layers of awful people being awful all-around, Gift ± finds more levels of nastiness to reach.
Meanwhile, Tamaki’s working part-time jobs thanks to a “friend”. And attending a funeral for the first time.
Gift ± volume 2 doesn’t go out of its way to give the characters any good traits. At best you have Dr. Hayashi (Takuma Hayabusa) as the Black Jack of this world, and that might be a stretch since he’s a part of Takashi’s group. So in a sense, this manga is realistic — lots of bad people sometimes do good things. They also pay for doing all that bad, sometimes at the cost of their life. There are enough characters in this volume that did or did not have that happen to them, but it may just happen!
But for the most part this volume is all about solving mysteries and piecing together clues. It starts when a cop on the force reaches out to an ex-cop due to an event that seems eerily similar to a case years ago, and somehow this volume ends with Tamaki, who didn’t seem anywhere close to this case, showing in real time you don’t mess with certain whales. It basically makes me wonder more about Tamaki’s past and how she would react when she finally meets Dr. Hayashi/Takuma. She’s certainly, after the first two volumes, proven to be aloof and extremely lethal in doses.
The volume is also, again, displaying everything that can turn you off. You’ll have examples of sex trafficking, eyeballs getting gouged out (and someone even eating one), general people being jerks, and all of this being drawn so well it’s kinda disturbing. This only works for this manga’s benefit however. And as the medical part of this series — in addition to its dark practices — are its draw, it has to be drawn like so.
The one thing though is that it doesn’t quite appear it’ll be a complete action series. For example, a shootout takes place where we don’t see anyone getting shot. The action in that sense is light, as it’ll only showcase characters doing shady stuff. That’s probably for the best, as it’s quite dark enough.
Gift ± volume 2 has a number of events tie together in an interesting way. Whether it’s probing the past, having a new group cause a bit of chaos or even show Tamaki’s room full of stuffed dolls, it throws a lot in here, and it’s not too bad. But the way I’m reading it on Manga Club is a bit cumbersome. That’s probably not going to change for a while…