About the Mangaka

Onogi Hiroshi is better known for his works in anime, with titles such as Macross, Orguss, Gundam and the RahXephon anime under his belt. His list of workings are extensive. Though he’s only done three novel series. This one, Genesis of Aquarian and Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

Abou8t the Manga

rahxephon_v1

It was with loads of reluctance I bought this series, in fact I only did so because I’d recently watched the anime and read the manga. However every review id seen for the series slammed it big time. I hadn’t seen any that said it was good. So when I picked up volume one I was cringing….

Yet, to be honest I loved the first volume. Yes it has a bucket load of editing issues, but to be honest only 2 or 3 were really large issues, most were simply bad spelling and could easily be translated properly by me. For example in one sentence safety is spelt as dafety. Given the context the word was being used, it was plainly obvious what it should have been. However there were one or two points where I had to skip a sentence because they just made no sense at all.

I have to admit though the DrMaster did put out one of the best quality novels I’ve ever seen (paper wise). A fairly rigid cover, with a nice heavy quality paper. They also leave in all titles and honorific’s, and the name conventions (family name first, given name last).

Truthfully I was really impressed by the quality, and would have been astounded by it if the novel had had a proper QCing before release.

Hiroshi’s writing style does take a lot of getting used to however, and I can understand why a lot of people don’t like it. Since he uses the first person view, which is hardly ever used in novels due to the heavy restrictions it places on the writer.

I think given those restrictions though he writes a very good story, that does flow very well.

The only thing I felt was off though was the chapter names. Each chapter should have had the name of whose perspective it was from. Since he did add this for a lot of them, I wonder why they weren’t on all of them. Though they could have been left out by DrMaster, though I can’t see why.

The other you notice in reading this series is that a lot of things are changed from both the anime and the manga. Events are out of sequence, or have been changed, characters react differently, and some event’s are scrapped all together.

A few examples would be when Ayato first meets Haruka, his relationship with Mishima, and how he gets aboard RahXephon the first time. All of which are changed drastically. We get a deeper explanation of things, such as why the RahXephon started to turn to stone, and how they stopped it.

The good thing about the first person aspect is that we get a lot more information about the characters, such as how they’re feeling about situations and what they’re thinking.

I do like this aspect, but it does take some getting used to and can be hard to really get into the first time round. I found I had to read the novel twice. The first time I was struggling with the first person aspect, and the confusion over who was speaking. However the second time around I was able to get into it more easily and really get into the flow of the story.

What I especially loved in this volume however was the art work. The front cover alone is stunning, but the insert art are even better. I think part of it is due to the fact they’re pencil sketches, rather than the sharp manga style we usually get in light novels.

To be honest, even with all the problems this volume has, I’ve no issue with adding it to my essential really list. In fact I highly recommend it, it’s well worth the effort it takes to understand what’s going on. That said if you’re after a light and easy read, you won’t like it.

Initially I had planned to read only volume one now, and then move on to either Blood+ or Good Witch of the West. However I think i’ll stick with this series for now and read volumes two through five together. Expect a single post covering those four volumes early next week.

Where to Buy

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