St. Dragon Girl 1
December 4, 2008
Much like I typically hate series that run in Wings magazine, I also generally dislike anything and everything from Ribon magazine, with the sole exception of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. There are others I like well enough, but they had flaws, and KKJ is probably the only one I liked unconditionally. Whereas Wings has no excuse, Ribon mostly doesn’t appeal to me because it’s been too long since I’ve been an 8-year-old girl. The stories are fine for what they are, and I think they’re great for kids as far as that goes, but I generally look for more in my series.
Take St. Dragon Girl, for example. The basic premise of the series is that a pair of childhood friends, one a martial arts master and one a powerful magician, find themselves in a position where the magician can now call his most powerful magic, in the form of a dragon, from the martial artist. This in itself is not bad. There are many awesome places you can go with a plot like this. St. Dragon Girl doesn’t really go anywhere with it, though.
The stories are episodic, and typically the two have some sort of minor scuffle, some minor evil occurs within the chapter, then the magician calls the magic out of the martial artist and she beats everyone up, and they live happily ever after. This happens for all four chapters in this volume. The stories themselves are okay, but I deeply regret the fact that there’s not more of an overarching plot.
There is a romance, of course. The martial artist loves the magician, but she’s too shy to confess her feelings. The magician knows this, and teases her a bit about it, and the two always come close to a confession at the end of every chapter… but it just doesn’t happen. I wish they would admit their feelings, though, the two of them are very cute.
I have no idea why this series is rated Teen, unless it’s because the martial artist has a tendency to comically beat up the magician. I can imagine there being a lot of little girls that would inhale something like this… but I think it’s probably not so much for people over a certain age.
December 4, 2008 at 1:21 pm
[...] Sandy Bilus reads vols. 1 and 2 of Black Jack at I Love Rob Liefeld (via Journalista.) Connie reads vol. 1 of St. Dragon Girl at Slightly Biased Manga. Ed Chavez has an audio review of vol. 1 of The Melancholy of Haruhi [...]
April 3, 2009 at 10:51 am
I have to absolutely agree with what you have to say. Saint Dragon Miracle Girl is a manga with a stuck plot, never progressing anywhere. The idea of having powers and a martial artists is not that original idea, seeing that making the protagonist invinvible and be that annoying, ruins most of the manga itself.
April 3, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Yeah… I haven’t been sent any additional volumes of it to see if it gets better, but it’s definitely not one I would be willing to spend money on, judging by the first volume. I completely forgot this series existed until you commented on this entry, actually.