Language: English
Direction: Right to Left
Pages: 204
by: Yasumi Hazaki
Publisher: Digital Manga Guild
Type: Series
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, ShoujoSynopsis:
Gen Tsukiomi appears to be a normal high school student but there is more to him than meets the eye. So when his old caretaker asks him for help in protecting his current charge, Hikari Kuze, Gen wonders what is going on. Besides being a ditzy junior high school student, is Hikari like Gen, with a secret of her own? In what often feels like a comedy of errors, Gen tries to figure out who is after them while struggling to maintain his quickly dwindling control over the situation. As if that wasn’t enough, a new romantic rival appears! But which one of them is he actually after?
Well, what can i say. When i initially started to read this i felt like groaning as it came off as a kiddies manga gone bad. However I’m happy to say i was wrong, yes it does at times still feel like that, but overall it really won me over. In the end it felt more like a tamed down version of Rosario + Vampire.
The art style of the series takes some getting used to, and some of the character designs used are just plain fugly. By the end of the volume though you realise that it’s deliberate. I do like the differing styles used for Hikari, though at times Yasumi does fail at drawing her face. Gen’s art style is okay, but he does lose out in quality when you compare him with Hikari, or even Shino who is surprisingly well drawn despite being a support character. The designs used for the other characters are varied which does make it interesting to read. The choices made for the bad guys in this volume were hilarious, especially Will.
Story wise, i did spot a couple of holes in this volume that made me scratch my head a bit. But I’m think (or hoping) those get explained over subsequent volumes. There were a couple of elements raised in this volume that i am really interested in seeing play out. For example on the romance side of things we have Hikari the Kid and Gen the adult, in love; how this plays out will be very interesting. Then we have the cross, something i initially dismissed, but was later revealed as being very important. I’m really keen to see where this leads as the initial information given is like a cliff-hanger ending.
The factions introduced are interesting as well, and i do hope that they become something more than just throw away entities. Loup has the potential to be a interesting nemesis, but i do wonder about the direction it’ll take.
This is where the problem is IMO. A series like this would usually focus on the action side of things. Great examples of this sort of thing would be the afore mentioned Rosario + Vampire and Dance in the Vampire bund. However since this is a shojo and more focused on the love aspect I’m worried those elements will just not be used, only time will tell though.
DMG did a pretty decent job with things. in truth the only complaint I’ve got is with the choice of fonts they used. At times it was very hard to read due to the size and type of font used. The smaller the text is going to be the simpler the font you want to use so it’s easier to read.
I went looking for information on Yasumi Hazaki, but surprisingly none of the usual sites held any information. ANN, the main site for information has no info on him/her, nor on the series. The other sites i visited had bare minimum info, his/her name and the titles of other releases, but that was it. No information on how long the series is or anything really.
All told though i am cautiously optimistic about this series, it has a lot of potential
