Published in the US by TokyoPop
Slugline: Cat boys gone bad!
Ichimura Tetsuno continues to be trained by the famous Shinsengumi, with the figures that feature in almost every anime and manga set in the Meiji Restoration making a guest appearance or in a supporting role in the title. There is not much of recap of what has gone before, so who all the characters are and what their relationship to each other is not immediately clear. What makes it even more difficult is that there is not a clear plot in this first volume to distract you from the fact that you don't know much about the characters. A couple of new characters (I assume) are introduced, which means that since I have not read the first series I know these new characters much better than the stars of the series. The antagonist (I think) steps forward at the very end of the volume, so there is not much information about what his plans or goals are. The messy art style doesn't help, because while I can tell the new characters apart, the older ones that I haven't really had a chance to mentally indentify get muddled together. While this is a beginning of a new story arc for Peace Maker, the lack of recap or introduction to the main characters makes this a bad first volume to pick of the series.
Peace Maker: Kurogane, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga
-Ferdinand
2 comments:
I loved the one published by ADV years ago. The it was even more messy and I thought it was a positive thing...
I also tried out this but I found the style a bit too clean and too close to the anime which I also saw.
Huh, there shouldn't be much of a difference between the two, though I supposed that it is possible one or the other company got a slightly different set of original images, or that the creator redrew or cleaned up the images in between the print runs.
The mechanics of layout and graphic design can be exceedingly complicated, so it does not mean that one company or the other did anything nefarious, but it could be as something as simple as different software being used for the printer...
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