About the Mangaka
Uehashi Nahoko is most famous for Moribito series, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in Japan. The first volume of this series (Seirei no Moribito) has been adapted into an anime, manga, and a radio drama.
While she reached fame over the Moribito series, Uehashi has published many other title’s and is an author of juvenile literature, mostly fantasy. She is also an assistant professor teaching ethnology (especially the Australian Aborigines) at the Japanese University, Kawamura Gakuen Joshi Daigaku.
Moribito has an official website, which can be found here. Though it’s all in japanese.
About the Manga
This is a hard series to like, but not because of anything Uehashi has done, rather the problem lies with Scholastic the British/American publisher.
Story wise, I found I really liked the way it played out. However I didn’t like the art for the volume.
The art style used, the classical japanese style, just really didn’t fit with the book, and for me lacked any life or depth. That said, I found the lack of images in the volume another disappointment. Usually we get a lot more images in light novels, so I wonder if they were deliberately pruned by Scholastic, or just missing from the original.
That said, while I didn’t like the images we were given to much, they weren’t exactly badly drawn. I just felt they were to heavily black and lacking presence and life.
The story is pretty interesting, but what I liked most was that the focus was more on the characters rather than the action. Sure we’re given plenty of action to keep us entertained, however the main focus is on Chagum, and how he handles the changes he goes through.
I did find him a bit whiney at times, especially in the later part of the novel when he was supposedly over it. However I do like him, and overall the character development is interesting.
Balsa is where I found the least development, but also the best story. I liked learning more of her history and how she became a bodyguard. Neither were really essential for the story to succeed, but learning them this early on in the series changes the impressio0ns we have of the series as a whole.
The way she is, where she’s going, and why she does things, all would have a different feel to them if we weren’t aware of her history.
For me the biggest disappointment was the length of the story, it was to short. We get so much build up story but the ending is over so fast. I was left feeling a bit empty afterwards.
Granted, there has to be a limit on how much you write to stop it becoming dull, however I would have liked to have read more about Chagum’s journey after separating from Balsa. Given the build up and development he goes though with Balsa, but nothing on what happens after he leaves the party.
Sure we get a spattering, but nothing really to get your teeth into. I would have loved to see more of his development as he travelled with the spirit egg.
My major complaints however are with Scholastic themselves. I don’t know why they chose this method for a paperback, but it fails big time. Firstly we have it’s size, it’s way over sized when compared with a normal paperback.
Followed by crappy paper used for the inside pages, and just as bad cover. I doubt it would have been so bad if it was a normal sized novel, but due to the over size nature it feels and looks terrible. The binding is also a huge failure, the tight binding means there’s a narrower foot print, however it leads to bending, and pages tearing.
I also wonder at the editing, several times I had a feeling the paragraph I’d just read had been rewritten because it didn’t flow to well. Considering this is a release being aimed at kids, that’s not surprising. However, re-writing something so as to fit a lower age group than was intended, is very wrong IMO. Not to mention a huge discourtesy to the original author.
When I bought this I was hoping to add it to my Essential Read list, but given what I think of the way it was published, I can’t really say I think that. I do think it’s a good read, and well worth getting if you have some free cash, or are a fan of the anime. Though looking back, I think the anime did a better job with the story.
Where to Buy
August 12, 2009 @ 02:37.
With regards to the length of the story, it is only the first book in the series. The second has been released since then although it took quite a while between volumes (the first was released in hardback in june last year, the second was scheduled for april this year, but I think it was released in may?).
It also took quite a while between the hardback and paperback prints, although thats nothing new (although I do continue to find the idea of Scholastic printing in hardback rather odd. Always have, even when they printed the chronicles Animorph books that way)
Regarding the size thing, for it to be “oversized” for a paperback I’m assuming the dimensions are 20x13in-ish (I’ve not actually seen one
). If thats the case they didn’t really make a choice to print it as an oversize paperback… rather they just continued using their standard kid’s (teens?) paperback size.
) and they were all that size and I can’t imagine much has changed since (I can actually only recall one series that they printed in a “normal” size, and that was Everworld).
When I was younger I used to follow a lot of series they published (Animorphs, Remnants, Diadem, Visitors… and more
I don’t recall the paper quality being great then either, but as most kids don’t really care about paper qualiy I can sort of understand that.
I’ve not actually read their take on the Moribito novel yet, because for some reason the fact they were releasing it put me off a bit. I’m not really sure why, but I guess maybe becacuse I read their books as a kid/teen I now consider their books to be for kids
Because of that, obviously I can’t speak to the quality of their translation (and definitely not to the quality of the original), but wikipedia (yeye, not the best source) does say that the books were originally published as childrens lit… they just had a number of adult fans too.