Bastard 5
July 20, 2008
Here. Because Pastel always makes other series look a lot better.
As messy as Bastard still is, there was a lot of significant story going on in this volume, and I can respect that. The battle between Dark Schneider and Arshes Nei turns out to be much better than I had expected, and it had a really epic finale. The armies pouring in to get the last seals to awaken… the evil being (whose name escapes me at the moment) put up a good fight, and there are some interesting fights and some other elements introduced.
Then something awesome happens, and there’s a big fight at the end of the volume. I actually kind of liked it. Maybe things will start picking up, but there’s at least the beginnings of organization here. I do like this series, I have a hard time hating it for being bad… which is kind of is, at the moment. I just can’t help but be fascinated, though.
July 20, 2008 at 11:51 pm
This is a book I’ve been eyeballing for a while, and since there has been a resent backlash against chopbloodsprayboob manga (I call it Gantzphobia), I’m feeling the sudden urge to amass all manga that bare the mature content lable and run away from it all before they are considered ‘bad business’ by publishers.
I read that this series has an old school Heavy Metal theme. Being a fan of old school (and new school) metal, the book holds an interest for me. But not if it’s full of cheese. I have heard that the words Metallica and Megadeth appear in the books but in what context, I don’t know. If there’s a giant Gene Simmons monster that kills with an axe guitar and crushes enemies with it’s long serpentine tounge, or if there’s a spell that can only be cast by headbanging one’s curly sweaty blonde mullet to and fro — I would much rather keep the $9.99 in my pocket.
July 22, 2008 at 4:00 am
Nah, it’s nothing like that. More like it references heavy metal in names alone, sort of like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The kingdom is called Metallicana, I think one of the neighboring kingdoms is Anthrasax, and they’ve got spells called Megadeth and other things, but it’s got very little to do with heavy metal aside from that. Sadly, I find myself yearning for a series like you describe.
Bastard has to be one of the worst of the M rated titles floating around, though. It earns its rating in strange ways. There’s lots of violence, but Viz’s touchup with the sound effects obscures a LOT of the action in favor of covering up the original sfx, so I wouldn’t call it overly violent. D.S. wanders around naked (degenitaled) frequently, and there’s lots of sexual tension and innuendo, but there’s been only… two sex scenes so far, maybe, and the innuendo isn’t all that dirty. Admittedly, I think the sex scenes happened in sections of the story that had been redrawn for a new Japanese edition, so maybe they occur more frequently later on.