About the Mangaka

I couldn’t really find anything on Takano Tsuneo unfortunately. Obata Takeshi however doesn’t really need any introduction. He was the mind behind Hikaru no Go and Death Note (which I hated lol).

About the Manga

Ral & Grad 01

I picked this volume up purely on a whim, I needed a volume to pad out my special offer purchases so I’d get my discount. They didn’t have any of my current series (that I wasn’t already buying), so picked this up as an extra.

I was surprised however to find it was a title I had planned to review later on as an unlicensed, I had no idea that Viz had released it.

As a first volume, this one was bloody hilarious!! It has everything a short series should have, ecchi content just right, good story, good characters, and excellent progression.

Takano’s story is a great addition to the Blue Dragon universe, her characters are extremely well developed and there are no flaws in the way the story unfolds.

The pacing is a bit on the high side, but it’s handled well so as not to trip over itself, like so many other short series have done.

Obata struggles at times with the art for the series, but on the whole I love the designs he came up with. However I did notice a few flaws, for example Grad is supposed to be a dragon, but in every scene we see it it resembles more of a mass of shadow than anything. Even when it supposedly takes for it doesn’t look like any dragon I’ve seen or heard of in the realms of fantasy.

Also, when it comes to drawing the merging of Ral, it looks like he hasn’t quite got that down as well, since the claw reminds me more of a turtles foot than a dragon claw.

That aside however his art is once again excellent, I love the way Ral looks in general terms, that tattoo he has is drawn really well.

Mio looks awesome, and Aia is just so damned cute >.<

This is definitely not a a normal kiddies shonen series however. While it’s not quite a seinen, it’s not a full blown shonen, due to it’s ecchi content, which while never over the top, is pretty blatant. So if you’re not interested in that sort of thing you’d best leave it be, though you’d be leaving a great series behind.

What really surprised me was the way Viz handled this, I was blown away by them actually doing a rewrite that works really well, and doesn’t alter the story flow. Yes it’s far from perfect, there are a few quirk in the volume, but over all it’s definitely the best release I’ve seen from Viz.

Sadly as with almost all of their releases they bleached the colour panels, which is a shame, since this volume has some awesome colour panels in it.

The other thing I noticed was the huge delays in releases, volume one was released in January, but volume two was only released a few days ago. This is bad IMO, since people probably forget about the new volumes since it’s been so long since it’s last releases. This is also exasperated by the fact that Viz have gone nuts over releasing Naruto (another series I despise lol) again.

This one gets a big thumbs up from me, though until I see how they handle the other three volumes I won’t be adding it to my essential read list, though it’s definitely worthy of being on their!!

Where to Buy

  • Share/Bookmark