Ark Angels 1
Posted: January 13, 2007 Filed under: Ark Angels 1 Comment »Ugh, I really didn’t like this one. In a fit of madness one day, I bought all of Sang Sun Park’s series published by Tokyopop based purely on the fact they were fantasy-oriented. I’ve heard good things about Tarot Cafe and always kind of wanted to read Les Bijoux (or however it’s spelled), but this one was something I hadn’t heard of before. It seems to be her newset series, and it seems to come out at a rate of about 1 volume a year or so.
I kind of liked the idea of the sons of Noah being turned into daughters and reenacting the whole Noah’s Ark story. Except… somehow this was turned into a comedy, with a heavy-handed environmentalist message that gets thrown in your face during every mission (which I was prepared for, but it was badly done all the same). Plus, Ham’s name was translated as “Hamu,” which bothers me because the son of Noah’s name is Ham and is not hard to translate, especially since it’s the easiest and Shem and Japeth survived intact. Intentions or no, Hamu is very wrong.
They also, for some reason, have little helper animals that turn into cute modes of transportation that they ride off on at the end of every episode. Why they don’t board the ark (which won points for me for being a whale) is a mystery to me, unless it was purely to feature these completely useless helper animals. Though, to be fair, they use the helper animals to find one of the sisters at one point.
Somehow gender play also comes in (Japeth was apparently raised a boy and plays one at school, which they shouldn’t be attending anyway since the plot doesn’t really allow it), and they also put in some shoujo romance.
It’s just… terrible so far. Everything I mentioned may not sound too bad, but the series just seems to trip all over itself. I really, REALLY wish it wasn’t being played for laughs, because that alone would help make the series so much better.
Rrg. I have volume 2 as well, maybe it’ll get better as it works some of its problems out.
[...] novels, including Abandon the Old in Tokyo. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie has brief reviews of vol. 1 of Ark Angel, vol. 23 of Oh My Goddess, vol. 2 of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and vol. 9 of Video Girl [...]