Le Chevalier d’Eon 4
May 25, 2008
While a lot of the stuff having to do with the poets still doesn’t make a lot of sense (and now Lia herself is a poet? Am I forgetting something?), and the first part of this volume was one long fight scene, I’m liking this series more and more.
French history keeps coming up and smacking me in the face, and I like the way things are tying together. The plot still feels somewhat intangible, and I’m still not sure what all this stuff means and where it’s going, but I must say that history says this story doesn’t have a happy ending. The best part of this volume was the last… third or so, where Robespierre enters the picture. Eventually. Not right now. I was actually surprised to see Madame du Pompadour and he interact, because she passed away long before the revolution. So did our friend the King in this story, his grandson was beheaded… so maybe we won’t actually see the revolution, even though that seems to be the aims of the poets.
The fighting, as long as it was, is at least significantly more interesting. The poet’s attacks are more solidly based in wordplay now. In this case, their attacks are based around bladed weapons which form circles, the letter “s”, and the infinity sign. The weapons themselves, as well as their spells, are powered by… er, palindromes. The palindromes get lost somewhere in the French->Japanese->English translation, but the notation at the end explains that many of the poet’s lines are well-known French palindromes, and several times the actual French palindromes are used in the dialogue, so it winds up being okay.
Nothing more about the aim of d’Eon and what he plans to do, but Nell’s role looks like it’ll be explained at the beginning of next volume, which is fine. I wish the explanations came a little faster, but I’m really getting drawn into the story, and the art is also quite lovely.
May 27, 2008 at 1:12 am
[...] the Last Hero and Ken Haley reads vol. 1 of Orfina. Connie gives her take on vol. 1 of Fairy Cube, vol. 4 of Le Chevalier d’Eon, vol. 19 of Astro Boy, and vol. 1 of Nephilim at Slightly Biased Manga. Marina Neira takes a look at [...]