If you're wondering what "Kizuna" means, well, join the club. The Internet tells me it is Japanese for "bond", which certainly makes sense in the context of this particular story. It is also, incidentally, part of the name of a superhero that protagonist 10-year-old Yu Yamato draws: Kizuna-Man.
The story, written by Setta Kobayahsi and drawn by Hachi Mizuno, is set in the fictional of Ohakama City in Japan...on Earth -8989, according to a caption. Yu is new to town, and he's so quiet and shy that he has trouble making friends. In fact, he hasn't made a single friend yet, and he is so unnoticeable that he's practically invisible to others, not unlike a ghost.
Also new in town? New York City-based superhero Spider-Man. What takes the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man so far from his neighborhood? Well, he discovered the Green Goblin has formulated a plan to attack and terrorize Japan, a plan the villain is apparently in the middle of executing when we first meet Yu and Spidey.
This Green Goblin seems pretty crazy, and Kobayashi has him start sentences with the words "Gob" or "Gobby"; for example, he cackles "Gobby Hee Hee Hee" while flying over Ohakama City and hurling pumpkin bombs.
Spidey comes to the rescue, outfitted in a slightly off-model costume (note the white armbands on the cover, and though you can't see it, the spider emblem on his chest has googly eyes here). During the melee, he is caught in the blast of a pumpkin bomb, and, in probably the book's funniest moment, Yu turns to the hero to ask if he's okay, and we see this:
Now, Spider-Man doesn't seem too worried about this. When Yu asks him if he'll be able to get back to normal, Spidey replies:
Eh, probably. Lots of stuff like this happens to heroes.
Like when my body was taken over by an extraterrestrial life form.
"So casual!!" Yu responds. (To be fair, the story does hedge a bit on whether he's dead-dead or just in a ghost-like form, as the particular bomb that caused the transformation wasn't a regular pumpkin bomb, but a "molecular disintegration bomb".)
In the meantime, there's the matter of the Green Goblin. So, ghost Spider-Man swoops into Yu, fusing the pair (here's where the word "bond" makes sense), which gives Yu Spidey's powers, and both minds seem to share some control of this new composite hero.
It also unlocks a new power, one apparently based on Yu's powerful imagination and artistic ability, as he can uses Spidey's webbing to essentially 3-D print objects and costumes to use in battle. This starts fairly simply, with the hero/es creating a baseball bat to knock a pumpkin bomb back at the Goblin, but gets increasingly elaborate as the manga goes on, with "Spider-Man Kizuna" creating a new costume (it looks mostly white in the manga, and, on the back cover, the parts that aren't white appear to be red; the Kizuna costume is on the cover of the next volume, solicited for December), various one-off costumes that are mostly visual gags, weapons, vehicles, a mech and so on.
That's the first chapter. As for the next four, they follow Yu and ghost Spider (who only Yu can see and hear) as they go to school, Spidey encouraging Yu to make new friends. He does, at the rate of one per chapter, but only after the Green Goblin gives one of Yu's classmates a coin-like "villain badge" infused with the essence of a Spider-Man villain, transforming them into kid versions of that villain for the new Spider-Man to confront and ultimately rescue. And so, in addition to the Green Goblin, Spider-Man Kizuna also deals with Little Vulture, Electro Boy, Petit Sandman and Black Kitty Cat.
Mizuno's art, as you have no doubt already noticed, is very distinct...especially for a Spider-Man comic. Most of the characters are 10-year-olds, but the adults all have the same small proportions. The figures all look a little like an "8", their big heads just about half of their squat, round bodies. Essentially, the entire book is drawn in a cute, "chibi" style.
I suppose this may take some getting used to for some readers, especially those used to a more on-model Spider-Man, but I personally was fine with it after the first pages, and it certainly fits the relatively lower-stakes adventure and the episodic cartoon show, game-like nature of the narrative.
It's also fun to see the traditional Marvel villains appear in this style. While Green Goblin is the only villain we see in-story, there are images of many other Spider-Man villains throughout. Like, for example, when Spider-Man recognizes the villain whose powers one of Yu's classmates has come into possession of, we might see an image of, say, the real Vulture or real Electro, and there's one panel where we see a huge swathe of Spidey's rogues gallery.
Indeed, Mizuna draws a complex spider web in the panel, between its strands drawing headshots of some 20 villains, and beyond all of those you might expect to see, like Venom, The Kingpin and Kraven, there's also The Shocker, The Spot, The White Rabbit, The Grizzly and...is that The Armadillo...? And The Walrus...?
That certainly suggests this could go on for at least a few more volumes. It's repetitive enough that I would hope it doesn't go on too long, but, after reading the first volume, I'm certainly curious to see how things are resolved, especially regarding bring Spider-Man back to life/getting him a physical body again.
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