Wow, that might be the longest title of any manga series I have on my site. Interesting.
Anyway. From the title, I was hoping that this would be similar to Nightmare Inspector, ie the two title characters investigate… well, supernatural stuff. That’s not quite the case, at least at this stage in the series, and it’s more about a massive black magic attack and a group of friends from school trying to save the world. You know how that goes.
This has the typical Shounen Jump hurdle of having way too many characters, but this book picks up after a major battle, so not very many of the characters are that important to what’s going on. The volume starts with a brief battle between the bad guys (I’m pretty sure it was part of Teeki, the main bad guy) projecting out of a brand on the breast of a character named Rio. Things wrap up pretty quickly, there’s a few chapters where the characters recover and regroup, and the action switches to a Magic School that they are trying to infiltrate in order to find a stone that will help them defeat Teeki. Roji is feeling particularly inadequate since he seems to be the only member of the group without phenomenal cosmic powers, so he’s trying to pick some up while at the school.
I liked the fact that Roji doesn’t have magic power and was observing the group from an outsider perspective/as a kind of cheerleader. I think he’s got some powers that haven’t been developed yet, and the story throws out a hint that he could be a very important part of Muhyo’s massive powers, but for the most part, he seems pretty useless in a battle. Usually this role is reserved for a female character that is tossed aside more often than not, so it was nice to see one of the main characters in this role.
I also really liked the art. It’s cartoony and really, REALLY weird, but in a good way. Many of the characters have weird-looking eyes, in particular, and there’s lots of creepy detail given to backgrounds, all the little magic artifacts and monsters, and pretty much everything. It’s confusing at times, but it’s unique and fits the series perfectly. I especially like the particularly unflattering way Muhyo is drawn. Also, for all the cartooniness of the art, the girls are all drawn with massive breasts, which I found to be a fascinating concession.
This was a good volume to pick the series up with since it gave me a good look at what’s going on in the overall plot, and the story taking place at the Magic Law School looks like it will go very interesting places. But I’m going to need to read a few more volumes in order to digest some of the smaller details, of which there appear to be thousands.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
July 10, 2009 at 7:23 am
[...] (Comics Village) Melinda Beasi on vol. 2 of Moon Child (There it is, Plain as Daylight) Connie on vol. 12 of Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation (Slightly BIased Manga) Lissa Pattillo on vol. 1 of Sarasah (Kuriousity) Brad Rice on Sayonara, Mr. [...]