ENEMY OF THE STATE: KONGOLAND

Summary

Kongoland is a dark tale set in the Kongo. The series follows the story of Choko "The Last Impala" who is out for revenge to see the Kongo Kingdom fall.

A tumultuous childhood has found him without allies but his demons will not rest until they are fed the blood of justice.

Concept & Thoughts

Why the Kongoland manga exists at all

I have a bad habit. Every time I sit down to plan a new story I end up pulling a map of Europe or feudal Japan, and then I feel a little embarrassed about it because there are a thousand manga that already do that better than I ever will.

Kongoland started as my attempt to break that habit. I wanted to write a dark fantasy story (the kind with a morally broken protagonist, brutal consequences, and a world that feels real enough to hurt) and I wanted to set it somewhere I genuinely knew nothing about. That felt more honest than cosplaying as someone who has "always loved Norse mythology."

The Kongo Kingdom in the late 15th and early 16th century is one of the most interesting places in human history to me. Japan is on the cusp of its great unification. The Spanish are carving through the Aztecs. The Portuguese are running slave trade operations along the African coast that touch nearly every corner of the world. Everything is colliding at once, and somehow most of that story gets told from the European side of the table. I'd like to try the other side.

That's where Choko "The Last Impala" comes in. The Kongoland manga is also known as 콩고랜드 to Korean readers.

Choko and the Kongoland manga story

Choko "The Last Impala" is the main character of this Kongoland one shot manga and he is not a good person, which is by design. The last impala manga title comes from the idea that everyone else from his world is gone. He's the only one left. His goal is to see the Kongo Kingdom fall. Not reform it, not save it. Bring the whole thing down.

The driving force behind that is revenge. Something happened to him when he was young. I'm not going to spell out the full backstory here because I'd like it to remain an actual surprise when the one-shot is finished, but the short version is that a "tumultuous childhood" is putting it politely. He has no allies. He has no community. What he has is a very specific target and the particular kind of clarity that comes from having nothing left to lose.

In terms of design I want Choko to feel like he belongs to the world. A man of the people, dark complexion, nothing aesthetically imported from outside the setting. His exact look (hairstyle, weapons, silhouette) is still open. I've been sketching different directions and nothing has locked in yet.

What I do know is that the influence here is closer to Berserk than it is to anything light-hearted. Guts is a catastrophe of a human being and yet you follow him anyway. That's the energy I'm going for with Choko.

Where Kongoland fits in the Enemy of the State universe

Kongoland is not a standalone project in the long run. It's set inside the Enemy of the State manga universe, an interconnected world where different stories happen in different time periods but the same reality.

The working idea for Kongoland specifically is: what happens to this timeline if I take one person out of 15th-century Africa and put them on a journey through the Enemy universe? Choko gets uprooted from the Kongo Kingdom and dropped into a story that is much bigger than whatever personal revenge arc he started with. How he handles that, whether he can hold onto his reason for fighting when the context changes completely, is the actual story I want to tell.

If you want the broader picture of what the Enemy of the State manga is building toward, I've written about the universe separately. Kongoland is one of the earlier threads.

Progress on the one-shot

Right now I've got about 20 of the planned 60 pages in storyboard form, and I'll be straight with you: it's rough. The current storyboard exists more as proof that the idea is workable than as anything I'd show another human being. It loses the reader in the middle third, the pacing in the action sequences is wrong, and I haven't solved the ending in a way that feels earned yet.

This is pretty normal for my process. If you've read my piece on how to write a manga, you'll know I treat the first pass as a disposable prototype. The function of it is to find all the ways the idea breaks under pressure. Kongoland's first storyboard has found plenty.

The final one-shot will be in the 50–60 page range. That's intentional. Long enough to build the world and earn the emotional beats, short enough that it actually gets finished. I've seen too many ambitious one-shots quietly turn into never-shots.

Why African historical fantasy manga matters to me

I'll be honest. Part of what pushed me toward this setting was frustration. Not political frustration, just creative frustration. I got tired of watching dark fantasy always default to the same cultural shorthand. If you want a brutal revenge story set in a real historical period, you're usually pointed at feudal Japan or medieval Europe. Those are great settings. I've read and loved a lot of manga set in both.

But the Kongo Kingdom in the 1400s and 1500s had everything a dark fantasy story needs. Political intrigue. External pressure from the Portuguese. Internal power struggles. A society sophisticated enough that its collapse would actually mean something. And nobody is telling that story in manga form.

That's my opening.

I'm not a historian and I'm not pretending to make an educational document. What I'm making is a dark fantasy one-shot that happens to be rooted in that place and time. If it sends someone to look up what the actual Kongo Kingdom was, that's a win. If it just delivers a good Berserk-style revenge story with a protagonist who doesn't look like every other protagonist in the genre, that's also a win.

African fantasy manga as a space is genuinely underexplored. Kongoland is my small attempt to do something about that.

Kongoland the One Shot Manga

The plan is 50–60 pages. I'm not rushing it. The storyboard needs another full pass before I'd feel comfortable handing it to an artist, and I'd rather take the time to get it right than push something out that embarrasses both of us.

"Those who have awoken, share the same fate."

- Taeja