About the Mangaka
Kouga Yun is more famous for her other works, Earthian and Loveless, as well as a slew of other titles. She has a website, note that it is all in Japanese.
About the Manga
I’m in two minds over this series, on the one hand I’m in love with it; however there are several aspects of it that really annoy the hell out of me.
Be warned, this post does contain some heavy spoilers.
There are several things wrong with this series, on the part of both Viz and Yun.
Lets start of with the story.
Yun is far from the greatest artist I’ve ever seen, in fact at times her style is pretty ugly. The cover design alone says that to me. The body design is totally screwy, Ouri’s head is weird, and that hand!! urgh.
And if I was to be totally honest, I probably wouldn’t have bought the series normally. The only reason I ordered it was because I’ve the original anime OVA version, and I loved it. So I’m predisposed to liking it.
Sadly Yun’s patchy art carries on through out the volume, though I will admit that it’s far from being totally ugly. In fact there are several well drawn scenes that really made me smile.
I was also happy to see that the character designs of the anime (with one exception) were the same as the original manga.
The first couple of chapters lack a smooth consistency to the story telling, that give the story a jerky feel to it. Thankfully it smoothes itself out fairly quickly.
The other thing I noticed was that things start off fairly close to the anime, but quickly go off on it’s own. While the progress is essentially the same, I have to admit I prefer the anime version, as it has a smoother feel to it than the manga.
What really surprised me however was the revelations of the manga. In the anime Olivier was portrayed as a sweeter than sugar kind of guy, totally devoted to his faith. Though I have to admit that felt weird when he said he was going to G, which was banned.
Any way, several times in the volume it’s hinted he’s something more, and then what he really is is sort of revealed at the end of the volume which totally blew me away.
The other aspect that’s got me wondering is whether this is a yaoi series, it has the elements of it.
For example Ouri while she appears in female form, it’s later proven that she’s a guy. But then hinted that they’re actually two separate people. It’s an interesting twist to the story, one I’m certainly looking forward to unravelling.
Unfortunately Viz seem to have back slided a bit with this release, and have fallen back into translating the SFX’s. I dropped them a line asking about this, and was told that this is going to be happening more and more as apparently fans prefer the translated effects (yeah right, and pigs can fly).
I really don’t like the translated SFX’s at times. For example the one after Ouri’s seal is released and she casts her spell, it really doesn’t fit the setting.
I also noticed more than a few editing mistakes, which left me wondering if it had been through a proper QCing process.
I am however prepared to let these slide for several reasons. First I like the series as a whole, but also because Viz are releasing this at their old price point, $8.99 (£5.99), where as others are raising the prices for their releases.
I’m not prepared to add it to my Essential Read list just yet, though it has the potential to go on there, given a few more volumes
Where to Buy
