Fairy Cube 1
Posted: May 25, 2008 Filed under: Fairy Cube 5 Comments »I like Kaori Yuki’s art, but for some reason I have a hard time convincing myself to read any of her series. I think it has something to do with my brain just totally rejecting the first volume of Angel Sanctuary, but I did like Count Cain well enough. I heard some terrible things about Fairy Cube while it was being serialized, and I thought I heard it was cancelled after 3 volumes for being… well, terrible, but I kind of find that hard to believe after reading the first volume, and even harder after reading the little author talk section where she mentions outright that it was meant to be a short series.
I actually really, really enjoyed the first volume. There were some problems with coherency much like I had with Angel Sanctuary (the mythology isn’t explained very well), but they are relatively minor, and the main mechanic, that a shapeshifter kicked the main character out of his body and he’ll do whatever he can to get it back, comes through pretty clearly. Actually, the only parts I had trouble with was a very brief section where the main character and a fairy go to the fairy lands, but it’s pretty clear what’s going on. The only real problem was that I wasn’t familiar with some of the terms and creatures they alluded to, but it doesn’t have much bearing on the short section of story that it ties to. I probably would have known even less had I not read Laurell K Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series recently, but that’s only because they tangentially mention the Seelie and Unseelie a couple times.
The concept of involuntary body snatching is actually kind of awesome, and aside from the heated need for revenge that the main character has, there’s a larger plot alluded to that apparently the main character and his shape-shifting salamander tie into that may pick up in a bit. There’s also a little romance for the main character that was surprisingly well-done for how little we know about the characters so far. It comes across as pretty genuine, and the flashbacks to the character’s childhood do a good job of ringing true.
So far so good, and I’m kind of excited to see what all can happen in the next two volumes. Maybe I’ll give Angel Sanctuary another try, too.
In what will surely come as no surprise by now, I actually own quite a bit of Angel Sanctuary, but haven’t read it. :) Well, I read the first volume and opted to wait until it was all out. I’ve been considering going back to it, particularly since Tsubasa 16-17 have left me with a taste for X and other similarly bloody, dark shoujo.
That was pretty much the same story with me, I read the first volume, then proceeded to buy the rest of the volumes, thinking it would make more sense if I read several volumes together. I think the last one came out over a year ago, and I still haven’t gone back to it ^_^; I may do so now, especially since I really liked this one. Count Cain was okay, but Angel Sanctuary was a later series, so it’ll be interesting to see the bridge between what I’ve read.
[...] 3-6 of Junk: Record of the Last Hero and Ken Haley reads vol. 1 of Orfina. Connie gives her take on vol. 1 of Fairy Cube, vol. 4 of Fairy Cube, vol. 19 of Astro Boy, and vol. 1 of Nephilim at Slightly Biased Manga. Marina [...]
Sometimes I feel I was the only person who could actually stand volume 1 of AS… but I think it was cause I saw ilustrations of the next volumes and decided to endure until I got to the pretty…
I actually loved Fairy Cube very much but I am kind of partial to fairy stories, now if Viz could only publish ludwig kakumei -.-
I just finished reading Angel Sanctuary last week, actually. I liked it a lot, but it definitely worked out better for me to read all the volumes together since it had around 30 characters wandering around throughout.
I also just realized I read about half of the second volume of Fairy Cube on the bus the other day and forgot to finish the second half ^_^; Ludwig Kakumei sounds great, but I think I would most like to try her one-shot Cruel Fairy Tales… though I suspect it’ll be about the same thing as Count Cain.