Variante 2
Posted: June 17, 2008 Filed under: Variante 1 Comment »I had forgotten about this series, I’m a little behind on it. Volume 4, the last one, is due out next month I think.
It’s just… a little bland. Still. It improved marginally in this volume, and it wasn’t beating you over the head as severely about the main character. It develops a little bit of a plot where the girl decides to use her arm to help the organization that’s got her trapped, which is probably the only option open to her. She tries to make herself happy about it, though… of course, the inevitable confrontations with the gore and murder of the chimeras takes her out of it a little, and she has a hard time adapting to the criticisms of the agents who feel she’s a “loose cannon.” There are parts which are compelling to read, which is more than I can say about the last volume, but about 3/4 of this volume feels like it’s going through the motions and doing exactly what you would expect of it in the most vanilla way possible.
The last little bit of the volume goes into the background of the main agent helping out the girl. Even though his background story is by no stretch of the imagination original, it’s at least significantly more interesting than anything that’s happened so far, and I actually felt a little badly for what happened to him and a girl he knew in the past. It’s good that it led into the next volume too.
The outlook is good at the present time, but for the most part… it’s still very blah.
[...] in Blue. Snow Wildsmith reviews vols. 1-2 of Shinsoku Kiss at Manga Jouhou. Connie picks up vol. 2 of Variante and vol. 4 of Bastard at Slightly Biased Manga. Deb Aoki takes a look at vol. 1 of Gimmick! at [...]