Manga / Desert Rose

A red rose blooms in a bed of hatred and madness that reeks of blood. I am a rose. A crimson rose that has forsaken love and blooms in the sand...

There are plenty of groups that specialize in counter-terrorism. G9 in Germany, SAS in Britain, America has special forces for it, but the problem is each group is restricted to operations affecting its own country. Terrorists have no boundaries, but those who battle them must respect national boundaries. However! There is one group that, like terrorists, has no borders. It is called Counterattack Terrorism, better known as CAT. They are mercenaries whose specialty is fighting terrorism.

—File 2: "Boomerang"

Desert Rose (砂の薔薇, Suna no Bara) is a manga by Kaoru Shintani (better known for his other manga, Area 88) that was first published in 1989 and ran for 15 volumes. In a time when terrorism is becoming both more advanced and vicious, counter-terrorist expertise is in greater demand than ever. Filling this need is CAT — Counterattack Terrorism — a Private Military Company that can tackle any burgeoning threat around the world. Within this group, Mariko Rosebank, known as "Marie the Rose", leads Division M: a fighting force composed entirely of women. Over 135 chapters, Mariko and her troops take on terrorists, assassins, drug cartels, and more, with a combination of overwhelming firepower and copious Fanservice.

In 1993, the manga also received an OVA side story, Desert Rose: The Snow Apocalypse.

---

Desert Rose contains examples of:

• Action Prologue: The first chapter, "Burst City", throws readers into an action packed hostage rescue situation to give a general impression of what the series will be like. It's only in the second chapter "Boomerang" that a security briefing explains CAT and the overall premise of the series.
• Amazon Brigade: Division M is a platoon-strength collection of fighting women, and CAT apparently fields two more just like it.
• Ambiguously Gay: "A Crown For Fugitives" has Marjoel King and Jeremy Jefferson, who become close while the former is secretly bodyguarding the latter. At the end of the story, Jeremy inherits a large fortune and invites Marjoel remain with her long-term, which has an air of romance to it.
• And the Adventure Continues: In the end, Mariko gets her revenge and finally kills Gryphon. Despite achieving her goal, Mariko decides to continue working in CAT, recognizing that even though her archenemy is dead, there will always be "another Gryphon" on the horizon to commit more terrorism.
• Badass Pacifist: In "The Angel's Fang", Division M gets a military surgeon, Dorothy "Dolly" Barnes, attached to their unit for a mission. While they doubt her usefulness when she refuses to take arms, Dolly eventually earns their respect by saving Helga's life with battlefield surgery.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Usually characters are depicted with no visible nipples or vulvas, though this is averted in a few panels where the women are drawn anatomically correct.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The characters do get injured over the course of the story, sometimes graphically, yet the girls always look picture perfect in their swimwear or underwear. The manga's final afterword wryly notes that with all the injuries Helga acquired, including open heart battlefield surgery, she should better resemble a "tattered washcloth". Helga (and the manga) just Hand Waves the issue by saying they use foundation and make up.
• Bland-Name Product: Some brands are slightly edited. The airline Qantas, for example, becomes Gantas in Desert Rose.
• Blind Seer: "Call Me Queen!" included Marsa Endora, a blind woman who possessed psychic powers and white magic, and was a target of the cult-like terrorists of the storyline.
• Bluff the Imposter: Markoff in "The Flowers That Blooms In White Nights" gets suspicious of Mariko while she claims to be a member of the YRF. He baits her by making small talk about another YRF member, Johnson the Crow, and how he used to leave black crow insignias on his bombs. Mariko, having done her research however, is able to point out that Johnson actually used red and white insignias, keeping her cover for a little longer.
• Bomb Disposal: Terrorists naturally like to use bombs to cause chaos, requiring CAT to disable them. The storyline "Red Star Galil" deals with a series of particularly tamper-proof bombs being used in a worldwide terrorist attack.
• Book Ends: Helga's backstory in "Blood Bridal" opens with an East Berliner dying while trying to cross the Berlin Wall, giving a visual of what Helga is up against when she eventually chooses to flee herself at the end of her story.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Team A" ends with Divisions M and A meeting up at the airport. When the men ask how Mariko's mission went, Lin simply says to watch the relevant OVA.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • In "The White Emperor" storyline, Mariko and Helga face off against Smirnov, a Green Beret that trained them and, to their consternation, has since become an officer for a drug cartel. Despite that, they manage to part with no hard feelings, since he turns out to still at least be a Noble Demon who hadn't committed the worst of the cartel's crimes.
  • On the other hand, in "Kowloon Express", Mariko is disgusted that Tatsuro Sakakihara, a long-time friend of her family, has now gone into organ trafficking.
• Bulletproof Vest: Bulletproof corsets, rather, for undercover work — One ceramic layer, five of Kevlar, and terminating with a titanium plate layer. It saves the lives of its wearers on more than one occasion, if only barely.
• Busman's Holiday: In "Liner 501", Mariko decides to take a vacation alone. By dumb luck, her flight then happens to be the one hijackers take over.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: On the one hand, you have Shintani's art style, which can show cartoonish and comedic expressions. On the other hand, the stories do not shy away from gore at all, and while the art may not be ultra-detailed, the violence is still graphic where it counts.
• Courtroom Episode: "Law Court 808" has Mariko being placed in a military trial following accusations of deliberately endangering rookie members in prior mission.
• Conspiracy Thriller: "Double Spade" has Division M embroiled in a plot involving the US Secretary of State, the European country Vesbania, NATO intelligence, and the impending European Union.
• Culture Clash: In "Black Banquet", Mariko helps train several Japanese police officers in combat tactics, not helped by their inexperience with life-or-death gunfights and Japan's gun laws.

"In America, a gun is a tool. But... in Japan they are lethal weapons".

• Cutting the Knot: "Red Star Galil" deals with a seemingly perfect bomb, armed with all sorts of sensors and traps to prevent tampering. When Jessica and Mariko have to defuse the bombs, instead of dismantling the electronics, they instead go after the explosive itself, removing it so that there is nothing to detonate.
• Dirty Cop: In "Sold Out", Inspector Conner turns out to be one of the terrorist conspirators attempting to kill the mayor in revenge for his lover's death.
• Drugs Are Bad: Cartels aside, the manga tends to portray all drugs as turning users violent and mentally unstable. In "The White Emperor" Mariko has to sideline a valued front line fighter after the latter turns to cocaine to deal with the stress of their work, and subsequently attempts suicide during a withdrawal. The idea reaches its apex in the last storyline, "Forever Rose", when Gryphon tries to unleash a Hate Plague in the US by spreading a psychotropic drug called "Green Blood".
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first chapter portrayed Division M as a Destructive Saviors, who demolish a massive skyscraper just to ensure the terrorists won't escape. This level of carnage would never turn up again, with the characters showing much more professionalism and caution afterwards.
• Ecchi: Nudity is common in the manga, though it's not ever-present in every story. In fact, the ecchi-ness of the series actually fades out as the story begins to focus more on military and political suspense.
• Enemy Mine: "Madrigal of the Wind" has Mariko stumbling into a conflict between Catalonian resistance and foreign arms dealers. While the personable Don Salvatore insists his own arms dealing is to defend against tyranny, Mariko is embarrassed she helped "the world's largest terrorist organization", even if Spain is safer as a result.
• Every Scar Has a Story: The bombing that killed Mariko's family left her with shrapnel scarring on her chest that resembles a rose. And she'll bring that backstory up every time someone notices it.
• Evil Counterpart: "Double Spade" has the Arc Villain Quincy Miller of NATO Intelligence, formerly of the sadistic Division Q in CAT. Compared to Mariko, who's interested in saving the lives of civilians and her troops, Quincy is a sadist and manipulator who demands blind obedience from her men and employs psychological torture to torment CAT and run a conspiracy.
• Fan Disservice: While the story does follow a division of beautiful fighting women, they can rack up some pretty gruesome injuries on the field. In "The Angel's Fang", Helga is nearly killed, and her shirt has to be ripped open for battlefield surgery, with shots of her innards pretty much stopping any indications of fanservice dead.
• Feminist Fantasy: While it is a Girls with Guns series, Division M is filled with women of all body shapes and unique backstories, and all of them are empowered, independent people who can use their femininity as a weapon as well as any gun, as necessary, while not letting it become all they represent. While they may get side-eyed by their doubters, by the end, no one can argue for their effectiveness as a fighting force.
• Fictional Country: Zig-Zagged. Sometimes Division M visit real-life cities for their work, but they're equally liable to visit invented countries.
• Gender Bender: A complicated example. In the story "Special Guest", Division M is accompanied by a reserve member, Ginnie Claire. As it turns out, Ginnie used to be Jean-Claude "Ginnie" Claire, until he was killed by guerillas that were employing magic to possess the wildlife. By blowing himself up along with the leopard tearing out his throat, his soul wound up riding the return trip back to his killer's original body, Katherine Barker. By the end of the story, Ginnie admits that she and whatever's left of Katherine is probably undergoing a Merger of Souls.
• Girls with Guns: A military example, but the core premise of Desert Rose is to have an army of women fighting terrorists the world over.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Gryphon is considered a terrorist mastermind who looms over several storylines and was behind Mariko's tragic backstory. He becomes the final antagonist of the manga's last arc.
• Hero on Hiatus: "Heaven's Gate" has Mariko herself sidelined due to a life-threatening injury, forcing Helga to takeover amid a bomb threat in Rome.
• How Unscientific!:
  • "Special Guest" involves African sorcery and soul swapping, which sticks out in a relatively grounded series.
  • Part of the way into "Call Me Queen!" witchcraft, psychics and black and white magic get involved.
• Improvised Weapon: When the situation calls for it, the girls can create some ludicrous weapon. Mariko assassinates a drug lord aboard a passenger flight by bludgeoning his face with a rolled up magazine. Lin, however, takes the cake when she repels a gang of kidnappers with an improvised slingshot and explosives made from nitroglycerin-soaked tampons.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Some stories have the girls get into combat in formal or fancy dress. CAT even has recruits undergo combat training in such outfits to prepare them.
• Karma Houdini: At the end of "Double Spade", the President of the United States fails to pull off a genocide that would weaken the EU in the future, but still gets a publicity coup that will secure his reelection amid a scandal-hit administration. Mariko isn't in a position to do anything, though she at least tells him he won't have the satisfaction of her or her Division's votes.
• The Infiltration: "The Flower That Blooms In White Nights" has Division M having to get into a town controlled by terrorists in Bosnia to rescue UN soldiers. In order to do this, they decide to masquerade as terrorists themselves answering their call — by staging a plane hijacking no less!
• Instant Convertible: In one car chase during "Call Me Queen!", the classic "drive under a blocking truck trailer" gets a work out, and Lin even lampshades how their car is now a convertible, "like rich people!"
• Know When to Fold Them: In "Red Star Galil", five bombs are left at landmarks worldwide. After two of the bomb defusal teams get blown up in the process, the third team in San Francisco decides the bomb is impossible to defeat and orders an evacuation. Jessica calls him a coward, but the commander simply retorts that he's in no mood to commit collective suicide.
• Lower-Deck Episode: "Team A" switches perspective and follows the men in Division A on one of their operations, as the main characters are busy with the events of the Snow Apocalypse OVA.
• Party Scattering: "Atomic Connection" begins with Mariko, Lin and Irene getting separated from the rest of the team and each other when a squall blows through during their air drop, leaving them stranded in different parts of the Quebec wilderness.
• Pocket Protector: In "Double Spade" Lin takes a round to the chest, seemingly killing her, until she returns to save Mariko's life. When questions about the chest injury, Lin shows the MAC-10 she had under her shirt was what got hit instead.
• Private Military Contractors: CAT nominally is a civilian organization that gets contracted by various nations to handle terrorist incidents. In "Sold Out" however, it's revealed that CAT is affiliated with the US Department of Defense. While CAT normally is given a positive, action hero-like portrayal, "Team A" does show other divisions being involved in more dubious contracts, where the troops understand that they're essentially installing a dictatorship by defeating the local guerillas.
• Shout-Out: "Team A" has one soldier using explosive-tipped arrows that resemble the ones in Rambo: First Blood Part II.
• Show Some Leg: Inevitably, Division M has had to sneak behind enemy lines by dressing provocatively. In "The White Emperor", they had to pose as prostitutes, while Mariko in "Chronicle of Barahari" distracted some guards by posing as a countryside ditz in a crop top and short shorts.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Authorities are often in disbelief that the vaunted counter-terrorist experts are all women. Even when they accept they're real operatives, their next assumption is that Division M are just glorified Bodyguard Babes who take low-risk jobs — Even new recruits make this mistake. Once the bullets start flying, though, the skepticism is quickly forgotten.
• Relocating the Explosion: On occasions where time bombs can't be defused, Mariko moves them where they'll be ineffective. Likely the most extreme example is in "Atomic Connection", where she handled a miniature nuclear bomb by launching it into the atmosphere with a combination of deep steel pipe buried in the ground and some C4.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The Demons of the Full Moon in "Call Me Queen!" are nominally related to the IRA, though their obsession black magic and rituals means they're more like a cult of terrorists.
• The Reveal: The last storyline, "Forever Rose", reveals that Gryphon is Harold Rosebank, Mariko's husband, who used Sydney airport bombing to fake his death, and didn't intend for Mariko and Timmy to remain at the airport at the time of the explosion.
• Tranquillizer Dart: Discussed and Deconstructed. Animal protection groups criticize CAT when they use live ammunition to stop zoo animals that terrorists have let loose to rampage in Piccadilly, asking why they didn't use tranquillizer guns. As it turns out, there's no universal dosage that can apply Instant Sedation to all the different types of animals present — the tranquilizers would either be ineffective or too effective, and kill the animals anyways. Given human lives are in immediate danger, CAT isn't about to experiment.
• Undercover Model: The premise of the "Sold Out" storyline, where Mariko gets roped into a fashion show. When she hears she can get one of the dresses from the show as a reward, she eagerly agrees, and gets some of her teammates who are on leave to join in as well, just in time to thwart an assassination attempt.
• Western Terrorists: The terrorists of the manga are usually affected by geopolitics and the turmoils of 80s and 90s globalization, meaning many of them emerge from Europe or North America. One story's group of terrorists are even motivated by a supposed conflict between the French and Irish in Quebec.
• Witch Doctor: One is employed by a London cell of African terrorists for a ritual to transfer their planned assassins' souls into wild animals.
• Would Hurt a Child: There is no line terrorists won't cross to force their demands. In the first chapter alone, hostage takers explode a child as part of their executions.

---

"Mission accomplished! That's a wrap!"