| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have some psds for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides some scans for you to download and use
in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here.
I also have pages on devart here
and urbis here. |
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| details |
The Genre: Fantasy |
| The Format: 4 manga volumes from Del Ray |
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| The plot: Hime is a superheroine. Ao can read
minds. Kotoha can conjure up anything with the right
word. And Akina... Well, he's just a regular guy,
surrounded by three supergirls! Together, they protect
the town of Sakurashin. But that's not easy, as
the town faces demon dogs and supernatural threats!
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| opinion |
| I used to con myself that I was primarily a
manga fan, rather than an anime fan as such.
The reason for this was that I really like reading
and love comic books. I also really like animation,
films and television of course, but I dunno, I've
always felt that the written (or, indeed, drawn)
story is a superior medium.
It engages your imagination in a way that the more
visual things like animation don't. Of course there's
an equally valid counter-argument that you can do
tonnes of stuff visually that you just couldn't
achieve with the written word. I mean how could
you really ever do experimental animation with printed
words?
Anyway, the basic point was that I used to think
I read more manga than I watched anime. When I joined
MAL - http://myanimelist.net/panel.php - and filled
out as much as I could remember it was readily apparent
that the number of volumes of manga I've read pales
in comparison to all the anime I've watched.
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Even if you factor in things like I'm a
slow reader and that I nearly always read
manga volumes twice whereas I rarely re-watch
anime, the hours devoted to the animated medium
are way bigger than those spent reading.
So why is this?
Well, obvious things that spring to mind
is that anime has much more readily available.
You can always pick up some anime in high-street
stores that sell DVDs, but not all book shops
sell manga. It often works out cheaper, especially
when comparing DVD box-sets with collections
of manga tankobon nowadays.
But mainly - and there's an irony here -
it's easier and less time consuming to watch
anime than it is to read manga. You can get
through more of it in less time.
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Plus - and this is a crucial factor too - I can
watch fansubs, but I've always struggled horribly
with the manga equivalent - scanslations.
I've always said I prefer DVDs over digital downloads,
but can put up with the latter. However, in the
case of manga and scanslations I really, really
can't be doing with scanslations. They're horrible
to read and deal with.
Wow, I dribble on a lot, don't I?
The basic point really is that it turns out that
a lot of the manga I buy is based on the shows I
watch. If I like a show I often buy the manga.
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Now generally I'm not disappointed. Nine times
out of ten the anime was an adaptation of the manga
and - call them prejudices if you will - because
I still prefer books I often like the manga as much
if not more.
However, occasionally something rather startling
happens and the manga turns out to be really rather
inferior to the anime adaptation. If you hadn't
guessed already, this is very much the case with
Yozakura Quartet.
The manga is, put simply, not so good. The anime,
put simply, was good. Well, I say it was good -
at the time of writing this I've only done my 'fansub
sample', which is to say I watched four episodes
on fansub and liked them enough to put them on my
"buy this if it ever gets released list."
But back to the actual point of the review - Yozakura
Quartet. Or at least to the point of the above dribbling.
See, in a super-clever trick the above rambling
was kinda supposed to mirror one of Yozakura's biggest
problems (I'm either a genius or that' some major
back-peddling :p).
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Basically, the story drifts around. I mean
it's really all over the place. And most annoyingly
it's not like that for any good reason. In
the author notes at the back the artist says
he wanted it to be like that to show more
'everyday' life and also to drop the readers
into the middle of a story/setting without
explaining to much.
These are noble goals to be applauded, for
sure, but, to be frank, the writing talent
has to live up to the goal in order for it
to work, and here it really doesn't seem to.
In the latter two volumes I have to admit
that things do become more interesting when
what appears to be the main plot gets going,
but even then the writing is rather lacklustre.
The main problem is you get some quite dense
exposition, but it's exposition that doesn't
really explain anything. Also, dialogue in
panels is often confusingly laid out. Plus
there's heavy use of those little 'aside'
comments outside of speech bubbles, only they're
not always asides, they're sometimes key plot
points.
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The total lack of background on many of the characters
is also frustrating. Also it can be a little confusing
in that they can be portrayed one way and then later
portrayed differently, as if the writer has changed
his mind.
But the most frustrating thing is that what I loved
about the anime was the sense of melancholy it portrayed.
Some really affecting and emotionally taught stuff
happens in the anime.
But then you come to read those bits in the manga
and none of that's there. They've done such a good
job improving the story for the anime it's almost
like they're completely different things.
Which is all a real shame, because the manga artwork
is truly gorgeous. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: It looks right pretty, but the
story is jumbled and confusingly told. |
| The Score: 2/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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