Wicked Lovely Desert Tales, Volume 2: Challenge

Last year I wrote a review for the first issue of a manga series based on the Wicked Lovely novel series. Here’s the synopsis of the first book:


…



Uh…


Something about a desert?

I was really not impressed by the first book. Nothing was explained properly, the story took forever to unfold, the character’s motivations were unclear and the dialogue made no sense.

But guess what, it’s not over yet! Someone at Tokyopop thought it would be a good idea to make the manga tie-in a trilogy. Because you know, those things have worked so well for them in the past…

                                              Shy's head is a little too close to Rika's chest...


Book 2 opens with a battle scene between Shy, some kind of fox faerie we met in the first volume, and some other faerie called Mali. It might be because it’s been months since I’ve read the first book, but I can’t recall if she even appeared in that one.

But still, a fight! Something exciting that I can get emotionally invested in! And the artwork even looks like it’s improved a little too. Hey, maybe this series won’t be so bad after all!

                                                   The tilted angles are just my crappy copying.


Yes, you could probably tell I was speaking too soon. An otherwise engaging fight scene is peppered with the nonsensical dialogue I mentioned earlier. It’s pieced together so poorly that each speech bubble seems like it’s been copied and pasted from a different book altogether. On top of that, in the background are some faceless characters and I can’t tell who they are. They might be part of the novels, but how does that help me, who hasn’t read them?

We then see the protagonist Rika, a faerie, and her love interest Jayce, a human, on a date in town. It seems that spending two hours together then kissing means that they’re in love now.

They seem to have forgotten that first time around, Rika made a huge bitching deal about how iron and steel are poisonous to her which is why she is trapped in the desert forever. So why are they on a date in town? Even the smallest towns have lots of buildings made of iron and steel. Should I even be questioning the logic of this series anymore?

The two of them discover Shy bleeding on the backstreets, having been stabbed by Mali with an iron rod. Rika somehow transports him to her cave in the desert so he can recover. This would normally be quite an interesting and dramatic plot point. Except that they drop it pretty quickly so that Shy can go on about how he’s not going to seduce Rika because….Uh….He doesn’t like blondes? He seems awfully talkative and perky for someone who has just been near fatally stabbed.

                                                                        Shit just got real.

He tells Rika to go back and fetch Jayce. Yep, because being in a busy urban area with his friends is a lot more dangerous than being in a cave in a desert surrounded by these morbid faerie things.

We then cut to a girl skateboarding. Nice and all, but it doesn’t seem to do much for the plot either. Why is it there, and why does it take up several pages?

 

Next is a funny moment when Keenan, the Summer King (of course that title means nothing to me. You could call him The King of Gelatinous Cubes and it would be the same to me) and Rika’s maybe former lover arrives at the cave. He’s a bit peeved to find foxy man lying in her bed, showing off his perfectly smooth man legs.

The two of them bitch at each other for a while until Rika arrives and she and Keenan bitch at each other for a while.

Also a return of the confusing artwork, as there’s a panel that seems to me like it isn’t drawn quite right. Rika appears to have her mouth wide open for no reason. It looks like she’s about to breath a fireball on Keenan for no reason.

So Keenan leaves and Jayce arrives and he and Rika spend a long time talking about how no other faeries are in line for her heart. This is pretty much the only proper development of their relationship we get in this volume. It’s not exactly romantic if Rika is constantly reassuring Jayce that she doesn’t fancy anyone else, when she so does. She sits awfully close to Shy most of the time.

Jayce asks to hear more about the faerie world, so I guess he’s just as confused as I am. And then they spend a long time talking. And talking. And more fricking talking. Obviously it doesn’t answer any questions so Jayce just sits at the side and doodles, and man he can draw fast! Or rather, the panels are set up so poorly that it appears that he can do four drawings in about half a second.

So finally we get another fight scene - Rika verses Malli and the desert faeries. We only had to sit through all that damn politics to get to it. And still there isn’t any build up to it. It literally cuts straight from Rika getting all cuddly with Jayce to the fighting. It’s basically the same as a jump cut in a film - incredibly jarring.

These sudden changes in Rika’s mood also make me wonder how we’re actually supposed to perceive her character. Is she a shy, lonely, innocent girl trapped forever in a desert prison? Or is she the tough as nails strongest faerie who kicks some arse to keep order in her desert? If she’s a character with hidden depths, then these changes need to be much more clear cut and we need to know the reasons for her reactions.

Just as you’d expect, the only cool scene in the entire book is over in just a few pages. Malli injects Rika with something, drags her off and ties her up, then reveals to her that it was Shy who pushed Rika and Jayce together. Wow, it only took five sixths of the book for the drama to kick in! Rika overpowers Malli, confronts Shy, confronts Jayce then calls a lady called The Winter Queen (faeries have phones now?) and the comic ends.

Aside from some nicer art (the faint image of snowflakes around the winter queen are a nice touch) and a few cool scenes, this book has all the same problems as the first one. Except that this one has an even worse flaw - The good bits are breezed over in exchange for endless talking about mindless, confusing faerie politics. Because that’s what teenage girls want when they read a book - politics! I’m not saying fantasy novels can’t have politics in them, in many cases they can be quite interesting, but it should back up the story rather than put the readers to sleep.

After two books and endless prattling, I still have no idea what these faerie things are. We hardly ever see them doing anything cool. They seem no different than ordinary humans, especially since they forget their own limitations. If you’re going to have magical creatures in your book, MAKE THEM MAGICAL!!

I was nice before, but I am starting to question Melissa Marr’s abilities of a storyteller. She certainly doesn’t take advantage of the visual medium of graphic novels.

The whole thing just feels like a huge wasted opportunity. The very first scene was a great set up - A human girl transformed into a magical creature and forced to live in a desert, in love with a man who can’t even see her or even knows she’s there. Whatever happened to that story? What is this book even supposed to be about?!

Cloud verdict - 2/10.

Manga review - Kobato Volume 4

Back in November, the first thing I ever reviewed on this blog was the first three volumes of ‘Kobato.’ Even after less than a year, that review is already an old shame of mine. Although I think my theory that Kobato is Mary Poppins is still valid.

She so is.

Since I now have volume 4 of the manga in my possession, I thought that I should review that one too in order to compare and contrast it to the earlier instalments.

A quick recap of the story so far so you don’t have to read my embarrassingly bad early review:

A ditzy girl named Kobato and her stuffed animal like advisor Ioryogi have come to Earth from presumably some other world. Kobato is on a mission to heal people’s wounded hearts. Whenever she does, a physical manifestation of the mended heart, that looks like a sugar candy, appears in Kobato’s special bottle. She must fill the bottle to the brim with mended hearts in order to go to a certain place and achieve a certain wish she has.

By chance, she ends up working at a day care centre run by a kind hearted women named Sayaka and her adopted brother Fujimoto. But Kobato soon finds out that the day care is under threat from loan sharks who are threatening to tear it down unless Sayaka pays back her loan, putting her in an impossible situation. Kobato wants to help, but with her limited understanding of the human world, it seems unlikely that she can.

Of course, most of this didn’t even start until the very end of the first book. When you re-read that one, it feels like a completely different manga compared to the rest. It’s turned from a collection of random one-shot chapters and even more random Clamp cameos to a pretty gripping supernatural drama/mystery story. It seemed that it took a while for the manga to find it’s feet and get to grips with itself. This isn’t uncommon in creative works, although it usually seems to happen to less experienced writers. Clamp have been in the manga business for over 20 years and it seems out of character for them to make such a slip up. At least that’s my humble opinion.

Even this volume has a different feel to it than the others, dedicated to Ioryogi and the rest of the ‘Residents of the Other World.’ One of Clamp’s greatest strengths is how they create so many different mysteries in each of their works, tease us relentlessly then wait until the very end to resolve them.

Volume 4 provides tonnes of ‘ah-ha!’ moments as it reveals some truths about Kobato and Ioryogi’s origin. But again, for every question answered there are two more raised. We know they come from some ‘other world,’ which you probably expected already, but from their dialogue, we know this world isn’t heaven or hell. So what could it be? We still don’t know what exactly they are, what they desire or why they are in their current situation. It’s frustratingly brilliant.

Ioryogi is also given the chance to go from the standard shojo mascot (well, standard except for the fire breath) to a really great and deeply complex character in his own right. When you first see him as a cute little stuffed doggie, that’s naturally how you see him - just a sidekick to Kobato’s adventures. Now we are beginning to see just how much is really packed into that little ball of fluff. It’s a huge difference to when all he did was abuse Kobato for her constant blunders.

This also happens, to a lesser extent, to the rest of the other world critters. To be honest I always thought their scenes were just the sub-plot and didn’t find them as interesting, but now I’m really getting into them. They make me really want to try that baumkuchen stuff that they keep going on about!

Sayaka only appears in one scene in this book, and apart from one major scene and a couple of small ones, the loan shark storyline is downplayed in place of the critter’s. The two story lines are really starting to contrast nicely to each other, even if one is a fantasy and the other reads like a soap opera. Look closely and you’ll see just how similar Fujimoto and Ginsei are. In fact, Ginsei could be Fujimoto as a furry!!

Although we only see a little of Okiura, aka ‘Loan Shark-San,’ we get to see him moving around for the first time, which adds another level of fear to his character. Amazingly, when he gets into a fight his facial expression doesn’t change at all, yet just a few pages later he becomes King of the Evil Smirk! Although it was really predictable that he was a yakuza, so it wasn’t that much of a revelation.

The rest of the manga is made up of Kobato meeting Fujimoto’s college friend Takashi, who is a little bland for a Clamp character, and then a women who is essentially a human version of herself. Plus one other plot development which I will not spoil, but it is so lovely!

I do have a big issue with this book though - It’s incredibly talky which slows the pace right down. Although we get some revelations and developments, it feels like they’ve taken forever to arrive. Most of these revelations come in slightly clunky expo dumps, and most of the conversations between the critters are ‘you’re always like that, aren’t you?’ which is kind of annoying.

Maybe it’s just because the price of manga has gone up and the release date was delayed so I was waiting for it for a while, but by the end of the book it felt a little like I hadn’t gotten my money’s worth. It doesn’t help that they chapters are incredibly short.

Clamp are known for their elaborate costumes, but we only get one outfit change from Kobato. One! It’s an outrage! The only crossovers we get are from ‘Wish,’ which is almost impossible to read legally anymore since the English release of the manga is years out of date. So most of them went right over my head.

By the way, the bunny is the Harbringer of Doom.

I don’t have much to say about the art, as it’s gorgeous as usual and provides some great emotional imagery. My favourite is sad Kobato sitting on her window ledge in the rain. It’s almost heartbreaking. But I’ve only just noticed this- what is up with everyone’s eyes? It looks like they haven’t been drawn properly. Is it supposed to be some kind of symbolism that I don’t get? Or is it just normal to draw eyes that way?

Despite all the flaws, if you don’t mind forking over the extra money, this is still a great story with great characters. It contains moments which will make any shojo fan sequel with pure delight, whilst still retaining some action and paranormal themes.

Kobato has finished it’s manga run in Japan, which means there’s only two more volumes to be released in English. Hopefully this means the story won’t be so slow paced anymore, and won’t contain so much filler. But I do also worry that all the plot threads won’t be resolved properly in such a short amount of time.

Even so, when the time comes, it will be a little sad to say goodbye to these characters.

Cloud verdict - 7.5/10

Mamotte! Lollipop review

Today’s review is for a manga I picked up out of curiosity to see what it was like, and quickly put up for sale again. The reasons will soon become clear.

From looking at the cover, it’s clear why I was drawn in. One of the positives of this manga is that the artwork is adorable! Maybe not up there with Koge Donbo levels of cuteness but still great to look at. And I like the sweet imagery throughout the manga. Hmm, why do I have a sudden unexplainable craving for a Chupa Chups?

But once you open the book you get to the not so good part - The story. It starts with a girl called Nina (who stole her hairstyle off Momoko from ‘Wedding Peach’) eating cake with her friends and talking about what her perfect man would be like. Oh good, another typical brain dead shojo heroine. We haven’t seen enough of those, have we? A strange round ball lands on Nina’s cake and she wanders if it is a candy. But all of a sudden a pair of guys in a flying car drop out of the sky and in the commotion Nina swallows the ball.

As it turns out, the boys, Zero and Ichi, are wizards and they have to find a crystal pearl to pass their exam. The same pearl which Nina has just swallowed. But there are other wizards looking for the pearl too and they start to attack, kidnap and even plot to kill Nina in order to get the pearl. And so, Zero and Ichi vow to protect Nina for the 6 months the exam will last. And wouldn’t you know it, brave handsome knights who will protect her are just the type of man that Nina has been looking for!

Although it’s not the best, I did kind of enjoy the first few chapters. I like the original take on wizards. Most wizards seem to be Harry Potter or Merlin rip-offs. My favourite part by far is the character of Sun, a goth girl competing in the wizard exam. She is so hilariously twisted, eating cake with Nina and acting like her gal pal even though she sort of plans to kill her. By far the funniest running gag is that Sun constantly manages to get her male partner Forte to cross dress, sometimes even without his knowledge. The other characters even call out that girl clothes suit him!

However, after a few chapters my interest started to plummet. The stories become lame and sometimes weird and confusing. One of the main plot points is that Ichi gives Nina a lollipop to protect her. When she’s being attacked by giant killer teddy bears (as we all are from time to time) it turns magical and protects her. The weird part is that Ichi says that the lollipop has the same image as Nina because she’s cute. Sorry but I don’t get how being compared to a lollipop is complimentary.
“Shall I compare thee to a strawberry flavoured Chupa Chups?”

What really turned me off this manga was the main character being a giant damsel in distress. ‘Mamotte’ even means ‘save me.’ Needing to be rescued all the fricking time hardly makes you a likeable main character. It would work if she had a good personality or some other kind of skills or traits that came in helpful (Look at Gwen in ‘Merlin,’ not only is she a lovely person, her blacksmithing skills have aided the plot several times.) but she doesn’t. She’s just a whiny little brat with no skills, talents or even intelligence of her own.

About half of the series is like this.


The huge panels of Zero and Ichi saying ‘we’ll protect you!’ get very annoying very fast. Even after she’s given the magic lollipop she still needs to be saved all the time. She even has to be saved from tripping over or getting a cramp in her leg. How the hell did this girl even survive before these boys showed up?!

Another thing that is really off putting - Some parts of this manga are just plain disturbing. First of all, there are continuous jokes about Nina having a flat chest. She’s twelve! Her boobs aren’t due to grow in for another two years at least! Are they trying to portray some kind of negative body image into pre-teen girls?

Even worse, in the third chapter a hot, promiscuous girl named Rokka shows up to seduce Ichi with her curves and lay on the fan service. But she’s actually a 5 year old little girl using a transformation spell. That makes it pretty sickening when she’s seen naked in the hot springs chapter.

The whole hot springs episode is like reading something from Love Hina - Nina’s towel slips off, Zero gets and eyeful so of course she whacks him and calls him a pervert. And yet Nina is underage even by Japanese laws! (The age of consent in Japan is 13). Surely I can’t be the only one who sees something wrong with this?!

Thanks to Funimation’s Youtube channel, I also watched all 13 episodes of the anime. Because I have literally nothing better to do with my time. And I must say, I did enjoy the anime more than I did the manga. The main factor was the adorable mascot Zura, a little green thing that is supposedly a seahorse yet looks more like a mini dragon. I don’t care what he’s supposed to be, he’s just so cute! Never underestimate the power of a cute mascot!

The dub voices are pretty good in my opinion. I especially like Monica Rial as Sun, she’s so cute! The anime also bothers to explain Zero and Ichi’s motivation from the very start and has a lot more good comedy, even during the Rokka episode. The ending even left me feeling cheerful, that’s always a good thing!

Yet it still has many of the same problems as the manga. The ‘protect me’ crap comes in even earlier and continues relentlessly. They do show that Nina is nice, but it isn’t mentioned until the third episode and is barely brought up again. Yet by the unexpected ‘save the world’ finale, we’re supposed to believe that Nina is just the most special and nice person in the world! She’s also stepping dangerously close to Mary Sue territory by suddenly gaining magic powers out of nowhere. In fact, I did a Mare Sue litmus test on Nina and she just scraped a pass!

When Nina finally does something for herself instead of relying on others, it just happens suddenly instead of developing throughout the series. If she had been that way all along or we got to see her character developing properly, then maybe I would have actually enjoyed watching.

There are a few moments in the anime when Nina has actual character depth, but most of the time I just want to throw hot tea in her face. The parts of the series that I really enjoyed were stories that didn’t feature Nina at all. The manga has a bonus story called ‘Medical Magical’ about a young witch training in healing magic. Not only does this story have better fan service (within the first 2 pages!) but it has a main female character who actually does something and goes through a dilemma that doesn’t involve cute boys. The backstory of Sun and Forte was 22 minuets of perfection!! It made me cry and want to buy figures of them. Going back to the same old shojo clichés in the next episode was almost painful to watch. Why couldn’t the creator have made a series about the magical world and the interesting characters and stories within it? It would’ve been tonnes better and more successful.

If you’re a fan of Bella Swan, Hollyoaks and cute artwork, this series is for you. Otherwise, watch episode 5 of the anime and give the rest a wide berth.
Cloud verdict - 4/10. Zura zura zura!

Anyone want to take the manga off my hands? Anyone?

Manga Review - Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales

Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales. Volume 1: Sanctuary


After my first read through of this manga, my initial thought was ‘what the hell?’ After a second read through, my thought was ‘Uhhh….’

‘Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales: Sactuary’ (so good they named it three times!) is a sort of manga add on to the novel ‘Wicked Lovely’ by Melissa Marr. I haven’t read the book nor have any intention to, but it’s gotten very positive reviews and a dedicated fanbase, so I’ll assume it’s pretty good. That said, this is the age that gave us the Twilight fangirl…


This manga apparently focuses on characters that were only mentioned in the novel and the script was written by the same original author. Apparently, each of the novels is about a different character, which I’m not sure I’m a fan of. There’s nothing worse than getting really attached to a great character then opening the next book in the series and finding out that you’re not following them anymore.

The story of ‘Desert Tales,’ from what I can tell, is this - A girl named Rika is watching a sensitive artist guy called Jayce who she is in love with, but he can’t see her because she’s a faerie. Don’t bother asking me what that is because the manga never explains.

Despite the confusion, the opening is rather sweet, but unfortunately it spirals very quickly into just plain weird. Some other kind of faerie called Keenan arrives for what is supposed to be an exposition scene yet explains nothing. I hate clunky expo dumps but exposition should at least explain something! Also Rika’s emotions make her seem almost bi-polar in this scene. One moment she’s all sad and mopey, the next she’s angry and then she starts this weird laugh for no adequately explained reason. But Keenan can make chairs out of sand, that’s really cool!


All I can gather from the backstory is that Rika was once human and she and Keenan were lovers. She screwed up some kind of ceremony which made her carry ice in her body and now she has to live in the desert because iron and steel are poisonous to her.

Or something.

That’s the first major problem with this manga - Nothing is explained properly! Maybe people who have read the original book will understand it, but those who haven’t are left completely stumped. I’ve read plenty of other ‘tie in’ mangas that made sense to those who haven’t seen the original material and may even inspire them to check it out. This one just alienates a huge chunk of potential readership. It’s almost no wander Tokyopop has gone out of business.

But anyway, back to the story. After her uber emo moment, Rika spots Jayce and his friends climbing up a cliff. After a storm. With no harnesses or protection.

And their stupidity is rewarded. Some creatures called the desert fey appear and again no explanation of who they are or what they’re doing there. I’ll just assume they’re the evil!faeries. They cause Jayce to fall but Rika catches and saves him. Somehow this means that Jayce can now see her.

Wait, what? How does that work? Why didn’t she explain that before? Why didn’t she make herself visible before now? And why did the desert fey try to kill Jayce anyway? You can see the frustration I get from reading this.

After that it picks up a bit because there’s a scene where Jayce is shirtless. Then again, if I wanted hot shirtless men then I could just read yaoi instead. In fact, why aren’t I reading yaoi right now?

By this point, the manga is just coming up to the halfway mark. That’s the second major problem with this manga - The story takes for-fricking-ever to tell anything. So many of the panels seem unnecessary and others just make no sense to me.

The only other option would be to admire the artwork, but it’s not exactly spectacular. There’s some nice panels of the desert and the shirtless scene I mentioned. But other than that, there’s nothing particularly interesting to look at. The dyed parts of Jayce’s dreadlocks make him look like he has branches coming out of his head!

The rest of the book shows Rika trying to protect Jayce from the desert fey without revealing her identity or being poisoned by the icky nasty metal. The first half was confusing but in the second half the story runs all over the place and I can barely tell what the hell is happening. The romance scenes between Rika and Jayce are very sweet and tender. Yet in a surprising change from the rest of the story, the romance progresses awfully quickly which just feels unnatural.

There are a few nice moments and you do feel a lot of sympathy for Rika, but otherwise the art is average, the characters are underdeveloped and the storytelling is downright terrible. The worst offender is a double page spread with word bubbles that just repeat the dialogue that has just taken place.

The manga does contains an extract from another of Marr’s faerie novels and although it’s not the best prose ever or the type of thing I would read, it’s much better than the manga. It shows that the author is very inventive and her storytelling style does work in novel form.

The only people I would recommend this book to are those who have read the original novel and have never read a manga before. I don’t condone Melissa Marr for trying her hand at manga, admittedly I’d like to do it myself someday, but I think she should stick to a medium that she is good at.

Cloud verdict - 3 out of 10