Demon Ororon: Complete Collection
January 26, 2008
I was totally smitten with this series. I could not put it down, and most of it was spent waiting forever on trains when the windchill was around ten below zero. I had to read it without gloves on. That’s love.
It was definitely flawed. It was totally and unashamedly ultra-goth, where a lot of the characters frequently pondered why they were born and what their purpose in life was. All of the main characters would regularly beat themselves up in internal monologues, and the dialogue at these points can be pretty corny. There’s also frequent moral questions that are brought up and discussed badly. Why kill? Why not kill when your life is in danger? I’m the king of hell, why can’t I kill ghouls? This person asked for death, why are you blaming me? See, I spared this person’s life and they just hurt me, so why should I? It may be because I read all four volumes back to back, but that stuff got tired and repetitive really fast.
As much as I liked the art, as more and more characters were introduced I had trouble telling them apart because everything was so minimalist. Ororon had three moles below his eye and his brother Othello had one mole below his eye and spoke in a gothic font, but otherwise they looked identical. To prove my point, I don’t know who a lot of the people on the front cover are. The two in the back are really minor characters, a pair of royal advisers or something. The fact that they’re minor characters and are the only ones I can identify says something. The one in the foreground who is not wearing sunglasses may be the eventual antagonist, one of Ororon’s brothers. He’s the only one in the series who wears glasses, so by process of elimination it would have to be him, but he had dark hair. In that case, maybe the glasses are supposed to be sunglasses, and I’d guess it was Othello since his hair was drawn shiny. The other two, if I had to guess, would be Chiaki and Ororon, but Ororon is always shown with blonde hair, so it may be that it’s just Chiaki and a group of minor characters, or that may not be Chiaki at all. On the back, Chiaki and Ororon are both shown with brown hair, so… I don’t know who’s on the cover.
I also don’t actually like the end of the series at all. AT ALL. What starts off as a really weird, quirky relationship between Chiaki and Ororon turns into a big battle royale for hell. I like that the final battle was started by Ororon killing someone he probably shouldn’t have (thus proving Chiaki’s point about taking life being a bad thing), but a ton of minor characters were brought in, all with positions in hell that were supposed to be important but we didn’t really ever find out about, then a whole hell power struggle was brought in at the end… and while it made sense since Ororon had talked about his precarious position in hell all along, it went into a level of detail that was unnecessary given the fact we never saw or heard much about hell. The final volume was one long fight scene with a ton of minor characters, and I just couldn’t tell what was going on in a lot of cases, why certain battles were being waged, where people were in relation to each other, and what was happening other than the fact Ororon was fighting one of his brothers. The progression of the series from light and happy to really dark was pretty well done even though I didn’t particularly like the direction.
The very end of the series is something I generally applaud, since it’s not something a lot of mangaka are willing to do even in the darkest of stories. It didn’t really make sense though given the fact that one person had the power to change/reverse what happened. Also, even though I wouldn’t want to read any more after what happened at the end, the eventual fate of “God” is never revealed.
Now that I’ve got all my complaints out of my system, yes I did love it. Despite everything it did wrong, it was so unashamedly GIRLY that it was hard for me not to get sucked in. The relationship between Ororon and Chiaki is great and very sincere, and although they don’t get many happy moments together once they both figure things out, to hear them talk of one another is most heartbreaking. There are plenty of other passionate characters, too. Othello, Ororon’s brother, is another excellent character. It’s implied that he’s extremely effeminate and sort of a pansy, but he gets an extremely tragic romance in a short story, and he’s also apparently the most powerful being in hell. You’re never quite sure if he’s totally on Ororon’s side either (it seems like he could whip out a dirty trick at any time to take Ororon back to hell), so he’s always accompanied by a sense of foreboding. He starts keeping a three-eyed bounty hunter as a pet at one point, and while this boy is a huge source of angst for the middle/end of the series, Othello eventually gives the boy a reason to live and releases his “pet” back out into the wild, so to speak.
Also, I should mention the characters are very much aware of how much they angst and complain. Othello comments at several points what a tragic figure Ororon makes. The fact that one of the possible directions for the series was some sort of battle between “God” and Ororon, or that “God” and Ororon might have to be separate forever also made me uncomfortable just because I could not foresee that going well at all. Unfortunately, “God” is totally downplayed in the end, and I kind of wish more had been made of this special power.
It has its flaws, but I really, really, really liked it. It’s a great passionate shoujo series with a believable couple, one of whom is an angsty Satan, and sometimes that’s all I need in a series.
January 27, 2008 at 3:37 am
Heh. You’ve made me want to read it, despite the litany of flaws. :)
January 28, 2008 at 12:51 am
It’s really, really good. It made me really want to read some of her later stories, where hopefully some of the more minor kinks are finally worked out. I really want to read the newest one in English, Demon Flowers, but I’ll probably wait until all five volumes are out and marathon it.
Wow, apparently there was a sequel to Ororon too, one that hasn’t been published in graphic novel form in Japan yet. Neat.
January 28, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] Kuriosity, and at Manga Jouhou she reviews Ordinary Crush. Connie reviews vol. 9 of Boys Be…, Demon Ororon: Complete Collection, vol. 6 of Elemental Gelade, vol. 5 of Skip Beat, and vol. 4 of Moon Child at Slightly Biased Manga. [...]
May 22, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I was so confused by the end of the series about who was who and I was definitely feeling the ‘OMG WHAT JUST HAPPENED?’ and I found out that the only two people I cared about was Chiaki and Ororon and man I got to the end and I threw the book halfway across the room (lucky no one was home). I was kinda depressed that it had to start from happy-happy down to the gloomiest thing ever.
Your review definitely hits the mark. And THERE’S GONNA BE A SEQUEL? O_O. So waiting for that!
May 25, 2008 at 3:04 am
I can’t figure out if the sequel is a continuing series or just a short story, I got the info from her Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, it looks like she hasn’t had a graphic novel since the end of 2006, when the last volume of Demon Flowers came out. It’s be good if it was a proper sequel that explained things/did something better with Ororon the character. I’m not sure, though.
June 26, 2008 at 10:59 pm
i dont have much to add but yeah, i really hate the ending. (but despite that i still LOVE the story ^-^) i didnt get confused with the info given its what wasnt said. like what happens to Chiaki and who was the angel man following her? personally i thought it was her father but even if it was, what happened to him? and who took over hell after Ororon? did Lika and ‘older cat brother’ ever get together? did the 3 eyed kid ever come back? and it really bothers me that all chiaki said at the end was ‘and that was the end of my first love’ er somthin like that… and that other person was right, Chiaki had ALL that power and at the end she was didnt do anything. plus the ending really draged out with ororon being to tired then getting up again and again… so yeah, still love the book though. very gory, very kool. =^-^=
July 2, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I forgot about the ending where Ororon was just “too tired.” I think that must’ve taken up the entire last volume. The other advantage of having it all in one volume and reading it together like this is that I can’t say one volume ruined the series for me, even though I’m pretty sure I would have hated volume 4 :p
July 18, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Liked it very, very much! But the end of the series was just TRAGIC. Why the hell did Ororon have to die? Chiaki could have saved his life! O.o
But there really was many unanswered questions, about heaven, hell, Chiakis parents (what happened to them?), the characters.. But still, I loved it. The drawing style was’nt typical shoujo manga (cute caracters with big eyes and stuff like that), I liked the way it was a bit “different”.
About the sequel, I read somewhere that the story was not finished, for some reason. It was published in the manga magazine Wings, but it was dropped. I dunno why. But it’s not made into a graphic novel, and therefore it’s only aviable in Japan. Btw, the name of the manga is Empire of Midnight.
July 18, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Forgot to write the story of Empire of Midnight:
Othello finds Chiaki, who hardly ever talks and acts lifeless, and takes her in.
Eheheee.. That was all I found -_-
Yeah, I’m a twelve years old Norwegian, so please forgive my bad english ^.^
July 20, 2008 at 4:22 am
Wow, thanks for the info on the Ororon sequel! I’d looked everywhere for it and nobody seemed to know about it. If it only ran for a few chapters and was dropped, that would explain the lack of information on it, though.
Your English is pretty good, I know a lot of adults here that can’t write that well ^_^
August 5, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I have been trying to track this series down for my daughter, but apparently, our local (AU) comic shops don’t have it, and are not certain if they can get it.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mark
August 7, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Hm, I live in the US, so I have to admit that I’m not terribly familiar with comic or book distribution in Australia. Do you have Borders, or a similar large book store? They should have the ability to order from a distributor… I know that the two major ones in the US have the volume available, but I don’t think they distribute outside the country, so availability there may be different.
Aside from importing it from amazon.com or a company like rightstuf.com, you might try ordering it used from a site like abebooks.com or alibris.com. Sellers on abebooks.com can set their own shipping costs and are allowed to ship worldwide, so you may get a better rate there. Amazon’s used book marketplace (look up the title, then click the link that says “used and new from $_____” just below the price information) has sellers that will ship worldwide, I think the international rate there is $10-$12 dollars. You may also try eBay, though I’m not sure how the prices there will compare.
October 11, 2008 at 2:27 pm
How many volumes are there in the complete collection of Ororon?
October 11, 2008 at 11:23 pm
This is a single volume collecting the complete series, which was originally four volumes long. The complete collection volume is literally the size of a good-size brick, maybe larger.