Apothecarius Argentum 2
November 28, 2007
I put off reading this manga for some reason. I remember being pleasantly surprised by the first volume, and I remembered I liked it, but I just didn’t read this one forever.
It’s still good. Most of the stories here have flashbacks that occur throughout, so you get a little bit of backstory along with whatever is going on in the present, which is usually developing the characters. The romance between Argent and Primula gets much better here, and the fact that Argent can’t be touched makes it that much more agonizing (though the end hints that this restriction may not be absolute, which is a shame). A lot of the volume revolves around Primula suddenly realizing she doesn’t know much about regular people and how they live, so she goes to the outskirts of the kingdom to first live like a commoner, then provide assistance to the impoverished area. There’s a subplot involving someone else trying to get a spot on the throne too, but mostly it involves building up the Princess and having Argent save her.
It’s a simple formula, and I can’t tell you why it’s so good other than the great characters, but it is. Sometimes that’s all it takes, I guess. It helps that Argent is a basilisk too, I think, which is almost out of place, but makes quite a bit of sense in the context of the story.
November 28, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Huh. I hadn’t realized before that the plot of this is kind of similar to the new TV series, “Pushing Daisies.” At least so far as the inability to touch or the girl dies goes.
November 29, 2007 at 6:05 am
I need to see “Pushing Daisies” really bad. It just sounds like its plot is, in essence, a manga. When my mom described it to me a couple months ago, I immediately thought of “Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service,” which has the agency who speaks to the dead and brings them back to life (sort of) to solve cases.
November 29, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I’ve really been enjoying it. It manages to be dark and whimsical at the same time.