Occasionally a manga comes along that makes me squee with glee every time a new volume is released. Though I’ve only read the first two volumes, I can tell that Blue Exorcist is going to be one of those manga.
Volume 1 introduces Rin Okumura, a well-meaning but short-tempered teen who has been raised by Father Fujimoto, a high-ranking exorcist, in place of the father he has never known. When a sharp argument between the two causes Father Fujimoto to drop his spiritual guard, Rin finds out why his father has been so absent: The lapse causes Father Fujimoto to be possessed by the demon lord Satan, who reveals that Rin is, in fact, a son of Satan (skip to the end of the review for more on that), and can possess all the demon powers that come with it when he unsheathes the magic sword that contains them. Generally, it’s not a good thing to be the son of the devil in the presence of exorcists, so Rin finds his life in mortal danger. Rather than run, though, he makes a rather unexpected decision. Feeling himself responsible for Father Fujimoto’s death, and determined to defeat Satan, he decides to become an exorcist. He is thus allowed to enter True Cross Academy, the training ground for exorcists, under the watch of eccentric Academy president Mephisto Pheles, who has plans of his own for Rin’s powers. In Volume 2, Rin meets his classmates and begins preparing for the Exwire Examination, the passing of which is his first step to becoming an exorcist. His successes are varied—He’s not an enthusiastic student, preferring field work to studying, and his snap-quick temper sometimes gets him into trouble with other equally hot-tempered students. However, he does form enough alliances to have help when powerful demons attack the school. Perhaps most importantly, though, he learns of the Blue Night, a night 16 years ago on which powerful exorcists around the world died after exploding into blue flame—the same blue flame that is the mark of Satan, and that identifies Rin as his son.
Blue Exorcist reads like a direct successor of D.Gray-Man and Soul Eater, two other familiar demon-hunting manga. It combines the quirky-cast-of-exorcists model found in the first with the bizarre artistic flair of the second, and then one-ups them both by featuring a surprisingly complex set of character relationships, and stellar art to boot.
The basic story of the series is, unfortunately, very familiar: boy-looking-for-his-place-in-the-world-gains-magic-powers-and-goes-to-school-to-learn-to-use-them. But the abovementioned good points easily make up for this. While the individual character types (for the main characters, at least) are about as familiar as the story type, the ways in which they interact are interestingly plotted. In Volume 1, for example, Rin’s high-powered abilities and his twin brother Yukio’s weakness around bullies would lead readers to expect Rin to be Yukio’s constant protector. (Rin got all of Dad’s demon powers, leaving Yukio with nothing but brains and a cute, squishy face.) However, the story works in such a way that Yukio ends up being Rin’s defender and even his teacher at the Academy…while at the same time knowing that he’ll be responsible for destroying Rin if his demon powers get out of control.
Most of the individually interesting character types are introduced in Volume 2, which sets up most of the supporting cast. These characters are also made of clever combinations of traits, my favorite being Ryuji Suguro, the class muscle who also happens to be a really intelligent student, and another favorite being Izumo Kamiki, an initially manipulative girl who, instead of spending a whole series figuring out that It’s Bad to Manipulate Friends!, learns it early, and then uses the damage caused by her actions as the driving force behind her future choices. For me, the only uninteresting character is Shiemi Moriyama, whose main goal at True Cross Academy seems to be to make friends and be adorably shy while doing it, but even she serves an eventual purpose in Volume 2, which is more than I can say of other manga characters who exist only to be The Cute One. And by the end of the second volume, Shiemi does become legitimately endearing. That said, this is one of the few manga in which I’ve found all of the characters appealing on some level.
Equally as appealing as the characters is the art. Kazue Kato uses a smart balance of simple character-focused frames and immensely detailed setting-focused frames, throwing in the occasional detailed character shot, too, for extra spice. It’s a clever, practical way to produce art that is both dynamic to look at for the readers and turned in on time for the comic’s editor (always a concern for these deadline-driven series), and it works well here. And then there are the covers. Blue Exorcist is a series that I considered buying for the covers alone, even before I read the actual books. Kato has a brilliant sense of color and character design, and when I tried to think of other manga covers to compare these to, I couldn’t. They are truly in a class all their own. The character designs themselves are worth some mention, too, not merely because they’re great, but because they’re also pleasantly varied. The absurd and clownish (and even iconic) design for Mephisto Pheles is one of the most memorable character designs that I’ve seen in recent manga. A series full of character designs like his, though, could have become overwhelming to look at, which is why I consider it a good choice on the part of the artist that most other characters in the series were rendered in fairly normal clothing—normal for a manga, anyway. The variety of face designs is commendable in this series, too. Many manga suffer from having too many characters that are simple variations on one basic character design, rendering them all basically indistinguishable. Everyone in Blue Exorcist is unique and recognizable.
The series’ only real problem, if it can be called one, is this: Some readers may be uncomfortable with the fact that the series’ protagonist is the son of Satan. However, as most anime/manga fans will already know, this isn’t intended to be a religious statement. In anime and manga, priests regularly wield ridiculous guns (Trigun, and virtually every manga involving a priest), nuns blow up things with abandon (Chrono Crusade), bible verses have magical power (Le Chevalier D’Eon and also this series) and the Vatican possesses an airship force and employs vampire-eating-vampires (Trinity Blood). In short, Japan’s take on Christianity, in its comics, at least, is pretty much like America’s take on Greek and Roman Mythology: We entertain ourselves with the parts we like and then add explosions to the rest.
For those who can jump this latter hurdle, Blue Exorcist comes highly recommended. If you like D. Gray-Man, Soul Eater, or shonen manga in general, this is a definite title to try.
Foundling by D. M. Cornish – Book Review
Rossamund Bookchild is a foundling boy with a girl’s name. This name was given to him by the paper pinned to his blanket when he was left on the front stoop of Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls, and it has tormented him ever since. As the object of frequent jibes and bullying fists, he eagerly looks forward to the day when he can leave the foundlingery and enter the navy, and thus a life full of adventure on the high seas. His dreams are dashed, though, when he is chosen to be a simple lamplighter. The hopelessly boring life that he anticipates, though, ends up being anything but (at least for the moment), as he is abducted, rescued, and then forced into service by one of the most famous monster hunters on the Half-Continent.
Foundling is the first in the interchangeably titled Monster Blood Tattoo/The Foundling’s Tale trilogy by Australian author D. M. Cornish. (This trilogy was titled Monster Blood Tattoo for its first American release but didn’t do very well, which prompted the publishers to change the name to the more benign and significantly less interesting The Foundling’s Tale.) Because of the depth the author has built into its world, the trilogy has been compared to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a classic renowned (and notorious) for the level of detail put into the cultures that populate the setting. This is a deceptive comparison at first, as there is nothing remotely epic about the storyline, nor any high-stakes goal that has to be reached (nothing on the level of Destroy-This-Ring-or-The-World-Will-End!, anyway). It’s just a kid running into trouble as he travels to a distant city. The deeper into the story one reads, however, the more sense these comparisons begin to make.
Cornish is a detailed creator; his dark, pre-industrial, monster-ridden world of the Half-Continent is among the better-realized in modern YA fantasy. The majority of his detail, though, is devoted to the culture of his monster-hunters and the alchemy-like magic surrounding them. These monster-hunters are not born magicians but people who, for example, employ a violent form of chemistry to dispatch monster threats or even have extra organs sewn inside their bodies to attain near-magical powers. Half the fun of reading this novel is simply relishing in its morbid world-building.
The novel’s main strength, however, ends up causing some of weak points, too. Early on, I felt so overwhelmed by the intricacy of novel’s world that I had to stop reading for a while, just to get it all organized in my head, and even after I picked it back up, there were multiple times when I thought, “GRRRRGH! When is something going to HAPPEN?” So much energy is spent introducing the reader to the mechanics of the world that its plot and pacing suffer significantly, at least at the beginning. Once I hit the middle of the book, I read voraciously to the end and was disappointed to discover that the last hundred pages of my book were actually not story, but appendices about the world of the novel (another similarity shared with Tolkien, who was a huge fan of super-detailed appendices).
All this said, this is not a novel for casual fantasy readers. This is a novel for readers who have read the popular fantasy novels and are ready to graduate to the deeper cuts. This is a novel for the readers who are okay with a little bit of slowness because the setting in which the slowness happens is just that awesome.
Romeo and Juliet: The War by Stan Lee, etc. – Graphic Novel Review
Comic adaptations of Shakespeare are hardly new, but in my experience, rarely are they well-done enough to be appreciated outside of a “Here, read this comic because you’re having trouble with the Shakespearean language in the play” context. Of the several that I’ve attempted, only a few have been books that I’ve reread for their entertainment value. Most of the others I haven’t been able to finish, and all of those left me with exasperated groans in my throat, just waiting to be unleashed when I came upon the next Shakespeare comic.
In fact, that is exactly what happened when I came upon this comic. When I first saw a thumbnail of Romeo and Juliet: The War, my reaction was *EXAGGERATED SIGH-GRUMBLE*, “Does the world really need another futuristic Romeo and Juliet ripoff?” The fact that it was Romeo and Juliet made it worse. Generally I hate stories that feature protagonists being both in love and stupid at the same time, which is what Romeo and Juliet is, at its heart. Oh, the original has all that iambic pentametered loveliness, too, but I can get that in every other Shakespearean work, many of which are far more interesting than this one.
Key to my exasperation with this book was the fact that I was looking at a thumbnail that was the size of, well, a thumbnail.
Then, one day, I came upon the actual cover in person, which sent me into fits of fangirlish glee:
This version of Shakespeare’s classic sets the familiar story in the far future, making both families consist of cybernetically- or genetically- enhanced supersoldiers, and then having them duke it out in a wondrous spread of futuristic glowing lights and shiny metal that makes the book look like a printed cousin of the Mass Effect games (which is not a bad thing because even the loading screens are fun to look at in Mass Effect games.)
Romeo and Juliet: The War is not simply a slapdash adaptation of a classic made for SparkNotes purposes, either. (Not to hate on SparkNotes, by the way. The SparkNotes graphic novel version of Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespeare-inspired comics.) It’s an impressively crafted work, and despite all the crazy technological changes, the basic story is still intact. I wouldn’t recommend reading in lieu of the original if you’re reading it for class, as you’ll end up answering questions like “Why were the Montagues and Capulets enemies?” with “Because they were such awesomely superpowered soldiers that they defeated everyone else in the world, leaving only themselves to fight!” (which, FYI, is not the Shakespearean reason). However, as a complement to the original text, it’s pretty good. Some changes are made to certain minor points in the plot, but—dare I say it?—these changes actually improve upon Shakespeare’s story, or at the very least make it more dramatic reading.
Basic accuracy is the least of this book’s good points, though. All of the other good points rest in its art. The art in this comic is not merely pleasant to look at. Everything about it is expertly accomplished, from the dynamic panel layout, to the characterful color design, to the wondrous and colossal scale of it all. The book makes frequent use of detailed full-page and multi-page spreads, and more than once I found myself stopping in the middle of reading simply to gawp at what was on the page before me. This is a graphic novel that comes very close to reaching the height of Capital A Art.
The only truly disappointing part of the book, for me, was the lack of an author or artist’s note in the back, as I was genuinely curious to know what happened to make this unexpected bit of awesomeness come about. The only extras included are some pieces of concept art, which are cool, but not as interesting as a look into the writer’s and artist’s minds would have been. I also had a problem with Romeo’s hair, which being the shaggy mop that seems to appear on every stylish teen boy’s head these days is going to look dated as soon as we’re out of the 2010s. But that’s just me being picky because there’s nothing else to complain about.