Wild Act 9
Posted: March 8, 2010 Filed under: Wild Act 1 Comment »Rie Takada – Tokyopop – 2004 – 10 volumes
Ah… hmm. Wow. That was certainly unexpected. Shoujo manga just doesn’t do that. It doesn’t throw such a disturbing wrench into the works.
The end of this volume is a mess, and sets up what will certainly be an epic final volume. The last scene in particular is powerful and disturbing and makes me realize that yeah, this series is pretty amazing in its way.
The rest of the volume went pretty well, too. Much is said about acting, and I was happy to see the rivalry business settle down for both genders. Ryu #2 has backed off a considerable amount, and nobody fell for the jealous girl’s plan to take Ryu away from Yuniko. The acting parts were mostly about getting Yuniko to live up to the legacy of both of her famous parents, so Ryu gets her started and builds her confidence about her acting skills, and she kind of takes off from there. It’s still not nearly as fun to read as Skip Beat, which is probably the biggest strike against it and the reason I’m not enjoying it way more, but it’s still quite enjoyable, and I really like how Yuniko has picked herself back up and is finding an identity outside of “Ryu’s Girlfriend.” I was a little worried that’s what the series was going to turn into now that they’ve moved to California.
The other great part of this volume were the little 4-panel strips in the margins of the chapters. Many of these feature a very realistic frightened Rie Takada face reacting to a variety of scary and vaguely unsettling situations. Excellent stuff. Maybe I should read the author commentary in shoujo manga more often.
I am excited and more than excited to read the final volume. I may just go ahead and do that tonight.
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