About the Mangaka

Mizuki Hakase made her debut with a series call The Monsters Collection, her most notable series are Demon Flower, a shonen-ai and Demon Ororon which is shojo.

About the Manga

I wish I could say that I loved this series, but sadly I can’t. In fact it went from bad to worse, to pure garbage. By the end of the fourth volume I wanted nothing more than to pack them up and send them to the store and demand my money back >.<

The only reason I finished reading this series was because I’m a bit of a completionist and have to finish ever series I start reading

So where does this go wrong? To start with the art is bad, in fact I’d go as far as to say it’s some of the worst art I’ve ever seen. Hakase can’t seem to be consistent with her style, it changes far to often for me. Not so much the over all style, but rather the way she draws the characters, there are to many changes in the style for me to really enjoy it.

This alone wouldn’t be enough for me to hate a series though, I’ve read and loved several with art just as bad as this one. The main stumbling block is the story, and stumbling is the best way to describe her writing style.

Hakase seems to stumble from chapter to chapter leaving a slew of chapters unanswered.

Initially I have to admit I had high hopes for this, even given the bad art. The story had the potential to be great, much like how the likes of Wish, by CLAMP was great. Unfortunately it never really lives up to the potential, and to be honest doesn’t event try to.

Chiaki is the most crappy heroin I’ve ever encountered. she get’s incredible mystic powers when the story needs her to be superhuman, then suddenly she’s back to being a crybaby human.

There was so much potential offered in the story, such as her father being an Arch Angel, the fact that her birth is considered a crime by the heavens. Then there’s all the power she has, enough to destroy a city in one strike.

Next we have the heavens declaration that she’s the second coming, and want her in heaven. This never gets followed up on, in fact after the initial mention it’s dropped completely and forgotten about.

Finally we have the debacle that is volume four. Talk about trying to cram to much into a volume, sheesh. So much is doing on in this volume it just descend into a confusing mess. Sure the ending is pretty good, but the way it gets there is the worst. It’s clear that Hakase had planed for more volumes, but for some reason was stuck with four. As a result volume four is a mess of unanswered questions.

Hakase did start a second season that was to be the sequel, Mayonaka no Teikoku, but it’s been on hiatus since the seventh chapter. Given it’s been several years there’s not really much chance of it being finished.

Even with a sequel though, unless it rewrites chucks of the first series, it won’t be able to improve on the story much. Yo much damage has been done.

Tokyopop add the final nail in the coffin on this series. Bad editing in the form inconsistent localisations, which should never have been there anyway!! They use the same crappy paper that they used to use originally, not to mention the guttering.

Finally, the choice of fonts in this series makes it damn near impossible to read at times. You’d think anyone with a brain would notice little spidery writing is hard to read on a black background

Needless to say this goes on my Junk Pile….scrub that, this one goes straight into the incinerator so as it doesn’t contaminate anything else with it’s foulness. I had planned to get Demon Flower, but after reading this, I’m not so sure any more.

Where to buy

I wouldn’t waste you’re cash!! But if you really must buy it, here ya go:

• Brits: The Book Depository
• Yanks: Amazon.com
• Canadians: Amazon.ca