Moon Child 1
Posted: December 15, 2007 Filed under: Moon Child 5 Comments »While Skip Beat was the best new series I’ve started recently, this one was by far the weirdest. In fact, this is one of the most bizarre series I’ve ever read. And there are some pretty unusual manga out there.
The plot involves aliens, mermaids, children who are boys but can turn into female mermaids named Benjamin, professional dancers, the actual main character of the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid,” and New York City. Also, it makes sense when it uses all these things, which is a real feat.
So far, it seems to be a pretty hot and heavy shoujo drama. The main character (named Jimmy) looks like a little boy, but is actually probably a couple hundred years old. He’s still not a mature member of his species though (not old enough to participate in the spawning season), but his feelings are still getting the better of him. He’s drawn to a male dancer who is down on his luck as well as a male mermaid (named Shona). The dancer (named Art) has his own true love in the form of a really horrible female dance star who ditched him when he fell into his slump. Art has a bad habit of occasionally losing his temper and hitting Jimmy. Shona also has a female who wants him to make eggs with her. Yeah.
While all that is fine and dandy and very fatalistic (Jimmy and Shona are tied through their ancestors, and it is their destiny to… make eggs together), there is one other thing this series does well, and that is atmosphere. The whole story reads kind of like a dream, and occasional monsters spawn around the mermaids, characters have fantasies of people who aren’t actually there, two twin boys come down to talk to Jimmy sometimes, and bunches of other weird stuff which just helps contribute to the weird, fantasy-like mood. The art is also pretty good, it was drawn in the 80s, so… it looks like an 80s shoujo manga, and I love that style.
I’ve got volume 2, and I do feel the burning need to continue to see what other weird stuff this series pulls off.
Yay for Moon Child! This is one of my favorite series, but no one else seems to be reading it. Maybe because it starts off a little slowly? I think it gets more involving and complex (and weird, too) as the story progresses. I’m looking forward to seeing how you like volume two :)
[...] Connie is on a roll at Slightly Biased Manga, with reviews of Monokuro Kinderbook, vol. 5 of Click, vol. 1 of Moon Child, vol. 6 of 3×3 Eyes, vol. 3 of Princess Princess, vol. 14 of Tsubasa, vol. 6 of Loveless, vol. [...]
Huh, you’re right, this series is seriously weird.. but also seriously interesting. I’m looking forward to reading next volume.. ^_^
Because Kaguya Hime is published very slowly (1 volume per year) in France, I wanted more Reiko Shimizu and checked Moon Child. Moreover, this series has been completely published in English. There’s still is The Top Secret in French edition but I really don’t like this series.
So, I gave a try to Moon Child and… weird is the perfect word to describe volume 1. When I read this article before, I couldn’t understand what you were talking about, what the story is about. So I bought myself a copy and I pretty enjoyed it, though the “egg” plot xD.
Now I understand why you wrote such an article… it is not simple to write about volume 1 of Moon Child.
As I really loved Kaguya Hime, I hope Moon Child’s plot will be interesting as well :). I finally ordered the next 3 volumes.
Again, thank you Connie to talk about Moon Child. I didn’t know it was released in English and it’s thanks to you I can read Kye Young Chon’s DVD, Park Hee Jung’s Too Long or Reiko Shimizu’s Moon Child :).
I’m glad you could get so much use out of my reviews! I’ll admit sometimes my articles probably aren’t the most clear, but for Moon Child, there really isn’t a good way to describe what’s going on. I loved it all the way through to the end, and it’s still one of the most strange and surreal series I’ve ever read. It just ended in December, and I’m hoping that there’s some way that CMX can pick up Kaguya Hime now that it’s over, even if they do have to release the volumes slow. I’d really like to read most anything else by the same author.
Top Secret does sound a lot more serious than Moon Child and Kaguya Hime. Honestly, it doesn’t really sound like something that would appeal to me either, though I would probably still read it if it were translated into English just to support her. Kaguya Hime is the series I’d like to read the most, and I’m also curious about her “Jack and Elena” series, which doesn’t sound like something I’d like, but is about a pair of androids that appears in several of her one-shot volumes.