About the Mangaka
Type-Moon (Original Creator) is a prominent Japanese game company, best known for their visual novels, co-founded by author Kinoko Nasu and illustrator Takashi Takeuchi. It is also known under the name Notes Co., Ltd. for its publishing and corporate operations. After creating the popular visual novel Tsukihime as a dojin soft organization, Type-Moon has since incorporated and produced the immensely popular visual novel Fate/stay night. Both of their works have been adapted into anime and manga series that have amassed a global fanbase. (Info snipped from Wikipedia)
Sasaki Shōnen (Mangaka commissioned to do the manga) No info available on him sadly, if you have any drop me a line with the Contact page.
About the Manga
After reviewing volume one, and then months of waiting, I finally got volumes two through six yesterday. I sat down and read all six in one loooong reading session, and loved every minute of it!!
WOW what an improvement!! As the volumes went by everything got better, the art, feel, story, everything!!
One of the first things I noticed is that the art, which was okay in volume one, improved dramatically as the volumes rolled by. The characters I wasn’t really liking previously were now looking better and better.
Ciel is a prime example of this, in volume one I wasn’t keen on her design. However as the volumes progress her design became sharper, and had more feel and depth to it.
Arcueid and Akiha were also greatly improved. almost redesigned. While I liked Arcueid’s design all along, I really loved her in these volumes. Like Ciel her design became stronger and more pronounced.
Akiha is where the real changes were though. Something about her design in volume one was off putting, but rather than it being to soft, it was the opposite. I think she was to sharp and rigid. In these volumes her design loses some of the rigidity, which was amazing.
The personalities of the characters also went through some changes, with Akiha and Arcueid both improving in many areas. For Arcueid it was coming to terms with love, betrayal and other emotions. With Akiha it was dealing with coming to terms with a truth she hadn’t faced, as well as the truth being revealed about Shiki’s past.
The story does take some thinking on at times, since Shiki remembers things differently to what he’s learning. So naturally this leads to some confusion, but it can also be a bit confusing for the reader. However in volume six some of these confusing elements are answered and make sense.
I really like the stories pacing, and my initial thoughts that it was going to fast don’t really hold true when I read it through a second time. Yes it is a fast paced story, and it could have been slowed down and expanded upon, but I think in doing so the tension and atmosphere would not of been as strong, or rather missing completely.
That said, there is plenty of potential and material to make a few spin off series, such as the Melty Blood sequel.
The other good thing about the story is that it’s not all doom and gloom, we do get to see some interesting comedy elements. Such as Arcueid dealing with falling in love for the first time.
I do think Roa should have been introduced a bit earlier, his appearance is held off until volume six, which doesn’t really give a lot of time to explore his character much. Which I think is a great shame since even after such a brief appearance, it’s easy to see that he has some awesome back story to reveal.
The change we see in Shiki is amazing as well, especially in volume six. My chin hit the floor and I almost cried over the cliff-hanger ending. It was interesting to see the interaction between Ciel and Akiha, which takes a novel turn.
I can’t wait to see the final volume!!
Sadly, DrMaster made a lot of mistakes in these volumes. Print wise I have no complaints, the paper isn’t the best, but it’s not the worst I’ve seen. And they left the colour panels in, which looked awesome.
However several times across the later volumes (four and five especially), there were a lot of grammar and extra word errors. For example on one occasion we have “and he and” on others we have repeated wording, such as “so so” or “the the”. These aren’t to bad, or frequent, but they do tend to stick out.
That said, I LOVE this series and am putting it on my Essential Read list. It’s well worth reading and buying. That said, I do feel I have to point out the DrMaster seem to be dead, and there’s no notice on if or when volume seven would be released. I’ve emailed them several times since March when I reviewed volume one, but no replies. So if you want to finish the series, you’ll need to read the scans.
But, it’s still well worth buying!! I highly recommend this series and think it’s one of those that everyone should read at least once. Though make sure you get the new revised print run, and not the original one.
Where to Buy
Note: Play.com does not carry volume six for some reason
August 13, 2009 @ 23:41.
Most excellent! This is one of my most favourite manga series, miles ahead of its anime counterpart which I pretended never happened. This however does a better job of taking from the visual novel and making one coherent story-line.
I must say I am glad you finally got vols 2-6, as volume 2 is where I think it definitely hooked me in, and where I thought the art started coming into its own.
I must admit I had real trouble tracking this down, the first few volumes have been a cat and mouse chase alternating between periods of out of stock or I was just too low on funds to even consider it. However, the later three volumes were very easy for me to acquire when the time was right. The weird discrepancy may be because of a long break taken between the release of volume 3 and 4… I oddly own the first three in Japanese for some strange reason, but endeavour to get the rest. I can wait it out if necessary as I have read it scanned already.
I think DrMaster have already been quite well lambasted by the fans already (anything derived from a Type-Moon work has so many rabid fans) for their poor quality. Particularly mistakes in the type, like your example of repeated words and grammar problems were problematic. The paper quality was quite poor for what I was expecting for a series I loved very much, but in all honesty, it wasn’t bad, just average, and I guess I was just too optimistic if I was expecting more from such a niche title. In the end I may continue collecting this in japanese too, for collector’s sake.
I must wholeheartedly agree, this is a must read, and a great addition to any mature reader’s library.
Deranged´s last blog ..My Workspace