Saturday 30 March 2013

Manga Review: Otogimoyou Ayanishiki


Name: Otogimoyou Ayanishiki
Author & Artist: Hiwaka Kyouko
Chapters: 21
Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Historical, Romance, Shoujo, Supernatural.
Plot:
Suzu, an ordinary girl who possess extra-ordinary power to summon demons, was left with a flute, the only keepsake of her disappearing ‘Father’. In the flute, dwelt the guardian spirit who responds to her plea in danger.

Review:
I came to the sudden realisation that the author of this manga is the same as Kanata Kara and I thought the two stories were very familiar, blonde moment there.

Art has a very 90s-esque to it and it's very similar to Kanata Kara although romance is very minimal so if you're looking for sappy romance, this is not for you.
It's very plot driven and I find the story intriguing. I thought the characters were a bit similar to the author's previous works and there wasn't much character development.

The female lead, Suzu, relied on Shinkuro too much, plus she suddenly gets powerful in the story and she wasn't shown to have trained much. Characters are bland and are again, a bit too similar to Noriko and Izark from Kanata Kara. I guess I've been drawing too many comparisons but that's the conclusion I've come up with.

The side characters are a lot more interesting, I mean you got a kitsune here (fox spirit) who's really funny and the villains are a lot more scarier too.
I thoroughly enjoyed it but it doesn't stick in your mind so much and I don't think I'd be reading it again anytime soon.

Monday 11 March 2013

My Latest Fix: Nobody Knows




I'm renaming my recommended manga segment to my latest fix. I think it just sounds better. Basically it's just manga I'm enjoying recently but they haven't released enough for me to determine whether the overall story is good.


Name: Nobody Knows
Author & Artist: Lee Hyeon-sook
Status: Ongoing
Chapters: 14
Genres: Drama, Romance, Shoujo, Supernatural
Plot:
The “self bully” Ban has a normal enough life, and where divorced parents aren’t that uncommon, her life becomes shadowed in mystery when her mother, Eun-Joo, suddenly brings their “distant relative” Jin-Whan home to live with them. Ban’s mother would always avoid the topic of her family, so who is this strange boy? Are they really relatives? What torturous secrets does her mother’s past hold? And what do the sudden strange happens that follow in Jin-Whan’s wake mean? Would a better question not be who is he, but what?

Overview:
I think it's definitely worth a read and I really dislike manhwas (korean comics). They are generally overdone and melodramatic like k-dramas. I guess I just have a prejudice against them but I know I shouldn't generalize Although the good ones I've read tend to have a dark ambient to them, being a wuss in horror I find it weird how I like crime, thrillers and dark ambient things, I just find them intriguing.