Time Stranger Kyoko 1

Okay.  So, one of these days I’m going to make a solemn promise to myself never to read anything that runs in Ribon magazine.  They’re fine series, but I am certainly not Ribon’s target audience.  There are a handful of Ribon series that I’ve read and enjoyed, but for the most part, they have Ribon-y things about them that I dislike.

Time Stranger Kyoko is a little bit better than I thought in some ways, and a little bit worse than I thought in other ways.  The plot was pretty good, and was much different than what I was expecting.  The fantasy adventure element is that Kyoko has to collect 12 different orbs and their masters in order to wake her twin sister Ui, who has been asleep since she was born.  Kyoko can recover the different orbs by traveling through time, which is her ability with the orb she gets from Ui.  She also gets a cane that appears to be sentient and advises her as to the wisdom of using her powers in certain situations.  I’m a sucker for time travel stories, so I really liked the plot of it so far, and I kind of like the 12 allies part too, though that lends itself later to having too many characters around.  One of the only things that bugged me about the plot is that no reason was given for Ui to be sleeping, or why finding the Strangers and the crystals would wake her up.  I mean, I don’t need much of a reason… it could be a curse, or bad timing, or her being the chosen one… whatever.  I just need some reason.  None was provided.

There was a lot more comedy than I was expecting, though.  The cane being able to talk is a good example of what I mean, and that element is more weird than it is funny.  Lots and lots of jokes are made, more than you would expect after having read something like KKJ or Full Moon, though the humor is about the same as it is in those series.  Kyoko makes her decisions based on things like whether or not she wants to take Flamenco lessons (which, admittedly, was pretty funny when a chapter opened with a panel of Kyoko saying “Die, Carmen!”), and one of the characters is a little robot girl mascot named Chocola who seems to tag along for no reason other than to make jokes pretty frequently.  More often than not, the characters are joking with one another, to the point where I would say this is a light shoujo humor-gag series more than it is an action series.  It was not to my taste, but the humor wasn’t terrible, and I can see how a little girl might like it a lot more than me.

The story at this point has just as much to do with Kyoko and her life as princess of Earth as it does with her finding the Strangers.  She is constantly accompanied by her two bodyguards, the last two members of their tribe, and usually by the leader of a gang of thieves who decides pretty early on and for no reason that he likes Kyoko.

Eh.  It’s only three volumes long.  I’ll finish it, but three volumes is about as much of something like this I can read.  Again, it’s got a good plot, and it’s not a bad series for a younger audience, but it’s just not for me.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.