Ral Ω Grad 4

Tsuneo Takano / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2008 – 4 volumes

I’ll be honest: I kind of liked this series.  It was easy to follow, and I liked all the gimmicks of what was going on.  I also liked that it was complete in four volumes, even though it was pretty obvious that the ending was being rushed.  The five special shadows were discussed, but the Black Rhino shows up without even a user, the Phoenix part was condensed, and the Clear Human appeared with almost no preamble whatsoever.  Plus, a powerful opponent from last volume was killed off-screen with barely a mention.

I liked Ral quite a bit in the end, too.  He was a pretty typical Shounen Jump hero, but I liked his upbeat-ness, and I liked that he was able to think for himself in the end.  I also liked that the final battle really was just the two powerful shadows, and the lesser fighters had nothing to do with anything that went on in that castle.

The ultimate outcome of the fight was unexpected, and pretty great, as well.  Grad seemed to have less will and personality than the Tiger or Phoenix, but he did have a stronger bond with his human, and I got a big kick out of that last page, where their friendship was more important than romance.

Amazingly, the series makes breast jokes, but only in passing.  There is no gag to go with them, it is just a fact that Ral likes to fondle breasts, apparently.  This is never shown, or mentioned in any sort of joking context.  It is only mentioned.  And I loved it a little more for its deadpan breast humor.

It’s still probably only a C from me, but I did like it quite a bit.  Still only had unremarkable characters and plot, but I liked what it was doing enough that I’ll probably pick up the first two volumes sometime in the future.

Also, I got a big kick out of the explanation that the symbol in the title was just a cool thing to separate the two names.  It wasn’t meant to be pronounced, and the writer had no idea what it was when he first used it.  He called it the omega symbol at first (which is what I’m using here), but said he later found out it was a dragonhead symbol, used in astrology/astronomy.  I got a big kick out of this, and it took me longer than I thought to verify, but yes.  The curved ends of the upside down “u” make it a caput draconis, the symbol for the ascending north lunar node.  Bah.  Not worth the time I put into looking it up, but still amusing.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.