Swan 12
Posted: March 3, 2008 Filed under: Swan 1 Comment »Whew. The Ballet Competition is finally over. On one hand, I’m glad we can move on to other things. On the other hand, the only real dance sequence in this volume was the last dance of the competition, Les Sylphides, which kind of bummed me out. I was surprised by the outcome, actually. Not that surprised, but Masumi did quite well for herself, I must say.
Since we’ve had dance after dance after dance for several volumes now, this volume of plot development was long overdue. Lots of character relationships were worked on, including Masumi and Aoi, Kyogoku and… the other male Japanese dancer, and the tying off of loose ends between Masumi and said other dancer. I like Aoi a lot. I’m a little sad he’ll be leaving the story for what I suspect will be quite awhile. We get to find out the connection between Masumi’s mother and the famous Russian dancer, and we also get the beginnings of a working relationship between Masumi and Leonard, the male winner from the competition. He’s really a jerk, so I’m not looking forward to him being swapped out for some of the gentler characters. Masumi’s sensei looks as if he’ll be leaving the story for awhile too, which is also kind of a bummer since he seems to do Masumi a lot of good and there’s always weird hints about the two of them. Not anything tangible, mind you, but some of the interaction is quite dated and weirdly intimate to me.
Aside from character interaction, Masumi is forced into a decision about what she wants to do next. She is personally invited to Russia to be trained with the Bolshoi ballet, and she’s also officially invited to America to perform a ballet in New York. The decision is unsurprisingly made more dramatic by hinting at a flaw that Masumi has that will be healed in one place and hurt in another.
Drama! Drama! Drama! Beautiful 70s drama! Gotta love it. It also felt like forever since the last time I read this series, so I’m glad to see that the next volume will be around in May.
[...] of Bastard, vols. 4 and 5 of Berserk, vol. 16 of Astro Boy, vol. 11 of Phoenix, vol. 6 of Enchanter, vol. 12 of Swan, and vol. 10 of Skip Beat. Kethylia reviews vol. 21 of [...]