Tiamat's Manga Reviews» Blog Archive » Maximum Ride Vol 01

Many thanks to Yen Press for sending me a review copy

About the Mangaka

NaRae Lee is proving to be elusive to me. I thought I had found a lot of information on her, however after reading the Maximum Ride that info isn’t right. Lee is still in school, which really took me by surprise. She does have a blog, though be warned it’s in Korean.

About the Manga

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Talk about a turn around!! This volume totally blew away my doubts of the series!!

If you’ve followed my thoughts on this series in the Yen Plus reviews, you’ll remember that I was concerned over the lack of depth, and not being able to get my teeth into the series. This collected volume totally blows that aside, in fact I was totally hooked on within a few chapters.

Reading the individual chapters as a collected tankobon is a huge difference. The flow, art, story, and characters all look and feel a thousand times better than in serialisation form.

Lee’s art is exceptional, and I hope to see more of her work. What I really love about her art are the character designs. When this series first premiered in Yen Plus it was criticised in several blogs about being over sexed. Most notably being Max and Angel.

Max was overly buxom for some people, considering she’s supposed to be sixteen, and Angel was introduced in was considered a provocative way. I truthfully don’t agree with it. Initially it can look that way, but for me, it was being used as a way of introducing the bond between Angel and Max. As for Max being overly buxom, I’ve seen seen sixteen year olds with bigger err assets than those.

Also lets not forget that sexuality is common place these days. Just walk through any major town centre, you’ll see young girls in outfits my mom would of decried as scandalous, and my gramps would have had a heart attack over. I think it’s easy to point to the sexuality in manga and comics and blame them for the lack of morals in society, but I think it’s society itself that has lowered it’s morals. (But that’s an unrelated topic, and not something I’ll talk about here).

Back onto the art, while I do find her art exceptional, just look at that cover, she does have some issues at times. Most notably when drawing in small panels, the characters just don’t look as right as they should, or could.

As for the story adaptation, I can’t comment on it’s quality, as I’ve never read the original novels. However, based on what I’m reading there’s nothing wrong here. The story flows well, if a bit fast. The action picks up right from the outset, and basically starts running. However, while the volume is literally action from the outset, it doesn’t leave you feeling tired. Rather the action is interspaced with what could be called softer action, as in they’re still action scenes, but they’re softer, and allow you to regain your breath (so to speak).

One of these is my favourite parts of the entire volume. It’s after Max separates from everyone, and gets into a bit of trouble. While it’s action, it’s not, it’s a rather heart warming event and really melds the volume together.

I have to admit I was surprised by this volume, here we have another OEL series I really like. Though is it really an OEL? NaRae is Korean, and it’s being done in Korea, rather an unusual mix.

Quality wise Yen Press did themselves proud with this volume. Rather than making it the usual size for manga, they’ve gone with the Korean oversize. Which does make sense, since it’s been drawn by a Korean in Korean style.

What is really great is the colour pages. In Yen Plus these looked great, in the tankobon they look awesome. Full glossy colour, emphasised by it’s lack of colour That’s right, while they’re full colour they’re aren’t done with loads of colouring. The soft, muted and subtle changes in colours are really powerful.