About the Mangaka

Iwahara Yuji is the master mind behind Koudelka, which remains unlicensed , and also for Chikyu Misaki, licensed by CMX. He also helped with character designs in the Darker than Black anime.

About the Manga

You know, I was sure I had reviewed this earlier, but I guess not

I love Yuji’s character designs, they’re cute, but also have the horror undertones needed to make you shudder.

Like my other fave of his, Koudelka it’s a seinen series and it shows, from the outset there’s a darkness to the art, and a subtle violent feel that you don’t get in shonen series.

There’s nothing overly graphically violent in this volume, but the undertones and feeling convey it more than any picture can. I’m really impressed by the way Yuji manages to convey so much feeling without actually drawing the action. I like this approach, rather than being over graphic and violent.

Kasumi is an interesting character, while I believe she’ll become the lead along with Marco, it’d hard to tell. However her personality is just so damned perfect, and the way she’s drawn is equally perfect, she’s the light to Marco’s dark.

Marco is a convincing dark hero, basically the evil guy who sides with the cause of righteousness because it’s the only path left to take. It’ll be interesting to see just how the bond that seems to be between him and Kasumi grows. The design that Yuji uses is dark, and creepy.

One thing I did notice about this series is that it’s very similar to Blue Gender, everything about it screams Blue Gender. From the strange disease, sleeping capsules, rampaging forests with monsters etc etc.

Despite this though I really like this first volume and am looking forward to the rest of the series.

This is a Tokyopop release, and for once they left the colour pages intact, so they get a thumbs up there from me. This volume does suffer from some guttering though, which is annoying. The translation was pretty good all told, though to be honest there really isn’t many places they can mess up a translation in this volume hehe.

Yuji’s works are really amazing, and I’d love to see them made into anime series, especially this and Koudelka,

It’s to early to judge if this series is worth putting on my Essential Read list, since several times series have started of great, and then collapsed. We’ll see after I get volumes two through four, and then review those.

Where to Buy

• For us Brits, head on over to the Book Depository
• Yanks to Amazon.com
• and Canadians to Amazon.ca.

One thing I’m noticing of late is that Canadians seem to be getting ripped off with manga. This volume is $11.25 in Canada, but only $9.99 in the US. Bit of a rip off there IMO!!