Tarot Café 3
Posted: March 17, 2008 Filed under: Tarot Café Leave a comment »I put off writing about this volume for a few days because I just don’t know what to say about it. I like the art, and the story’s got some really awesome stuff in it, but… the awesome stuff just isn’t fitting together quite right at the moment. There’s certainly plenty of story in this volume, and there’s more light shed on what the situation between the main character and the mysterious Ash is, but there’s still so much left unexplained that I feel like I can’t really talk much about it until I learn more.
There is a one-shot story about a rich sultan/king and one of his slave boys. The king enjoys the boy’s company and favors him above his wife and all his other lovers, but an innocent request basically makes the sultan throw all that away. He regrets it, obviously, which is what makes him show up at the Tarot Café.
There was another one-shot which I preferred, which was about a cute relationship between a young man and a Welsh water spirit which was in-progress, basically meaning he had a chance to save things between the two of them and it was surprisingly upbeat. Plus the water spirit’s name was “Cheese,” which I thought was adorable.
The back story for Pamela and Ash starts to get into who Ash was in his previous life, and it does so by introducing a sort of antagonist for Pamela in the present who claims she killed Ash. It starts off first by explaining that often customers will pay with beads from a necklace that Pamela is collecting, but it doesn’t really explain why she is collecting the beads.
Actually, I take that back. The Sultan story starts off with the necklace explanation, because the Sultan pays with a gem from the necklace. While she has nearly all the beads, she only has the one gem, so she may still take a long time to complete the necklace.
It’s got a lot of fun elements working for it right now, and there definitely is a lot to like, but I think it’s lacking right now just because the elements aren’t quite drawn together right for some reason. I like it well enough, and I think it could be great once the main story gets going, but it’s just not quite there yet.
