Silver Diamond 4
Posted: August 26, 2009 Filed under: Silver Diamond Leave a comment »Shiho Sugiura – Tokyopop – 2009 – 17+ volumes
On one hand, I still adore the fantasy world that this series is set in. The characters cross back over to the desert world here, and the political unrest and ecosystem problems have lots and lots of potential. Add to that the fact that the main characters have drifted into a den of “numbered children” – basically the unwanted extras from their respective families of all social standings – and really, you can see the series is just getting started.
Action has entered the picture in this volume too, and since it is enhanced by things like guns that fire plants, crossbows that grow from seeds, and mysterious swords, that element is shaping up to be pretty awesome. The action scene upon re-entering the desert world was the highlight of the volume for me, and in addition to the weird weaponry used, we begin to see the strangeness of the character’s background come into play, like Chigusa being a monster or Narushige’s noble status.
The downside is… well, Rakan is lame. He’s always asking for group hugs. Always asking for people not to kill. Even when bandits are surging forward with swords, nobody’s allowed to hurt them. The other characters want nothing more than to indulge Rakan. I can see how he’s supposed to be a bright spot in an otherwise dreary and disturbing world, but… there were just too many scenes where he would pipe up with a naive demand that everyone would be initially shocked by, then wind up doing happily anyway.
The lame hugs were really too much, though. I know this has been going on the entire series, but I think I just didn’t notice it as much until the characters were all thrown into the desert with bandits stalking them. The hugs seem less appropriate.
But Rakan’s lameness is balanced out by his plant power and the fact he baffles everyone by looking exactly like the Prince, and I’m more than willing to put up with group hugs when the premise is this good. It’ll take a lot more than that to turn me off Silver Diamond, which is moving slowly but surely into “fantastic shoujo fantasy manga” territory.
