Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a review copy
About the mangaka
Svetlana Chmakova is best known for her Dramacon (OEL) series published by Tokyopap. Born in Russia then emigrated to Canada, where she graduated from the Sheridan College Classical Animation program, in 2002. She then began to publish her manga on the Internet, where her works were found by CosmoGirl! magazine.
She has a website which can be found HERE
About the Manga
Another amazing volume!! Can’t praise this series enough, it’s got everything I love in a series.
Yet again Svetlana proves she has what it takes to keep her readers hooked. Excellent art, excellent story, and excellent flow.
I really like the art in this series, in fact it’s one of the few OEL titles I find nothing wrong with. Svetlana’s art is as always fresh and exciting with nothing to point out as wrong.
What’s especially good, for me at least, is the facial expressions. Svetlana has interesting and fun way of drawing her faces. All of them are funny, especially the surprise and shock ones. Though I will admit that I don’t like the eyes overly much, a lot of them look a bit freaky, almost all black and demonic looking.
Also this volume has some colour pages, which look really awesome. When you see the characters in full colour they take on a new look and feel. They become more realistic, and in Alex’s case all the more cute, and damn does her astral look totally awesome!! in glossy colour.
One of my favourite scenes in this volume was towards the end of the volume. Alex is flying and we get the spooky gown overlay seen from volume one, and her astral’s out in full force. Damn does she look just awesome in that scene. It has the a bit of a spooky presence, yet at the same time has a lot of power in it.
We get loads of story in this volume, but the series is still hiding it’s secrets. Mostly this volume deals with Alex coming to terms with the loss she has from the previous volume, over coming her own mysterious condition and going to school, all to recover what she’s lost. While we still don’t know what her condition is, that has left her being home-schooled, I’m reckoning on something happening in the past which has since made her sociophobic (that’s a fear of people).
Other groups start to get on the move as well, as various forces start to gather. However one thing has me worried, the next volume, three, appears to be the last volume. Since there’s still not been anything revealed as to what the main crux of the story is (nothing beyond vague hints to some evil), I’m worried that it’ll all be crammed into the last volume.
I’m hoping that this is just the first part of a series. For example this series is called Nightschool: the Weirn Books. So this trilogy sets everything up, introduces the Weirn Books (which still haven’t made an appearance). Then another series of volumes carries on the series.
As I’ve come to expect with Yen Press the quality is superb. No guttering in this volume per say, though on a few pages where the scene is a double spread it does naturally look a bit squished. Like they always do Yen leave the colour pages intact, and some extras at the end. Followed by some fan art of the characters, and competition results.
Now, to give you guys the bad news. The final volume of Nightschool isn’t due for release until October 2010, yup that’s right we have to wait an entire YEAR for it *sobs*. Though it is still being serialised in Yen Plus, so we can still get our fix. I hope Yen sign up Svetlana for other series as well, I really want to see more of her work.
Where to Buy
