Le Chevalier d’Eon 8

Tou Ubukata / Kiriko Yumeji – Del Rey – 2010 – 8 volumes

You know, I couldn’t be happier that Del Rey finished this. They aren’t publishing a lot lately, and it’s easy to just leave this one since we’ve only been getting a volume a year for the last year or two due to being caught up with Japan. It’s also an adaptation of an anime, which leaves it the low man on the pole. But I always liked it, despite it being incomprehensible at points, so I was happy to see the end.

I’ll be honest and say one of the main reasons I like this series is purely the art. Yumeji is great at drawing the Chevalier Sphinx’s costumes. The one on the front cover would be amazing if it looked like her breasts were attached to her body, and maybe smaller. But all the costumes look like that in every panel. I’m sure it’s an insane amount of work, and I really appreciate it. Every one of the characters is dressed like that, too.

The plot… I don’t understand what’s going on much of the time. Somehow, it suddenly clicked and made sense in this volume. I thought there was something being lost in translation between Latin, French, Japanese, and English (and sometimes Greek too, maybe?), but the battles literally consist of the characters moving letters around from what people say in order to fight back with another word that should defeat them, based on who they are. They seem to mostly be anagrams and one word that can make another word or words if the letters are re-arranged. These references are so obscure and plot-specific that nobody is likely to puzzle it out for themselves before the characters do. It made sense when Lia was fighting some of the last enemies here, too.

Basically, I am ashamed that it took me eight volumes to figure out she was rhyming enemies to death. I understood there were word plays, but I thought they somehow summoned other powers, that the hierarchy of poetry was involved, other things came into play… apparently not. Solving certain puzzles certain ways makes you ascend the rank of poet, and… gives you power to fight others? That seems to be all it is. If so, this is probably a lot easier to read than I thought. I was thinking too hard.

The battles were suitably epic this time around, and I cracked up when I saw who the poet ultimately was that she came to the cathedral to fight. Actually, there are two of them. One is more sinister than the other. I thought she really had shoved her sword through the last one’s head in the end, though, which was terrifying and intense.

The actual ending of the series? Not as impressive. It is horribly open-ended, with the goals of the characters un-accomplished and everyone setting out to Prussia to stop the poets on the last page. This is merely the end of the “France Chapter.” Except I don’t think there’s a “Prussia Chapter” to the anime, and I know for sure that the manga doesn’t continue after this. I hate open-ended work like this. Maybe he hoped to come back to it some day, but… I doubt that will ever happen.

Not that I’m going to lose any sleep about not knowing the resolution to Le Chevalier d’Eon. It was mostly just a long string of semi-confusing battles. Mostly, I’m going to miss Kiriko Umeji’s artwork. I hope she gets another series that lets her show off her skills like this one did.

Actually, I take back what I said about the anime earlier. It sounds like the anime is nothing like the manga. I just read one of the later episode summaries and it blew my mind. I don’t even know how things would have gotten to that situation. They go to Russia in… the fourth episode? Wow, it’s a lot different. I kind of want to see it now.