Walkin’ Butterfly 1
Posted: September 12, 2007 Filed under: Walkin' Butterfly Leave a comment »I had to had to had to have this. Not only do I have a bad habit of picking up books from every new publisher, I also heard this one was something like Paradise Kiss, so yes. It was an immediate buy. Aurora is using a very thick, high quality paper stock, which is nice, and I loved the huge interview they included in the back even though I wasn’t familiar with the artist. I wasn’t so fond of the way they left dialogue asides in Japanese with a small translation nearby, like a sfx. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s kind of weird when it does. The touchup is also very bare-bones and a bit plain, but it sort of suits the artwork in this case. These are all minor quibbles, and are not things I regularly notice… I merely point them out since this is my first time with Aurora.
It’s like… Moyoko Anno. There’s an interview in the back with the artist, and I was surprised when she didn’t mention Moyoko as an influence, because they’re styles look so much exactly alike. So far, it’s reading a lot like Happy Mania except younger and with much less sex. The point is driven home rather solidly in the first volume that the main character leads a crappy life because she stands out so much for being tall. After a bit where we see just how much this affects day-to-day things for her (and also get introduced to her family and love interest), she accidentally winds up in a fashion show, where other people are just as tall as she is and don’t seem to be bitter about it. She fails spectacularly at this show, and her new drive is to somehow become a model so she can show up the smarmy designer who made her doubt herself and screw up. It’s actually not at all like Paradise Kiss except for the girl finding herself accidentally in modeling and perhaps eventually getting with the designer. Paradise Kiss did it well right from the first page, but this is still trying to get itself going. It’s doing a fairly good job so far, but Paradise Kiss it ain’t.
Things were mostly just set up in this volume, so I don’t want to pass judgment on it just yet. It’s got to go someplace interesting or not interesting before I figure out whether or not I’ll like it.
