Slightly Biased Manga

There wasn’t even all that much action in this volume other than at the very beginning, when the battle with Greyarts was finally settled.  The rest of the volume has the characters stalled in a large country and growing more and more suspicious of Viro.

There were about three things in this volume that I liked.  One was the creepy way Viro started licking Ren’s Elemental Gelade (located on her forehead).  The second was that this new country had mail delivery via squirrels.  The third was that, in order to hide from guards after smuggling into the country and becoming a wanted man, Cou camouflaged himself in front of his own wanted poster by striking the exact same pose in the photo.

The rest of the volume?  Eh.  The series still doesn’t seem to be going anywhere save for towards the Garden (eventually), and while new stuff with bounty hunters trying to take out Cou has been introduced, it just doesn’t feel all that interesting.  It’s possible some fun stuff will happen with the bounty hunters later though, so here’s hoping.

I just… it’s still not my thing.  It’s an action-y series with fairly shallow characters aimed at boys.  You can tell it’s aimed at boys because there were lots of jokes about the main character and various girls, and he is accused of being lecherous without actually talking, looking at, or touching anybody.  Also, in this volume, there is a long scene where all the characters visit the pool.  In case you wanted them to be at a hot spring instead, hot springs are discussed as an alternative.  Or something.

On a totally different subject, because I don’t really have that much to talk about for this volume, I nearly forgot the teacher in Urusei Yatsura’s name.  I’m not sure how this is possible, because his name is printed all over his clothing and person.  It took me around a half hour to remember: Onsen-Mark.

Anyway.  The fighting tournament finishes up in one of the most predictable ways possible.  As the team boards a cruise ship bound for a new destination, a new enemy attacks.   I wasn’t very impressed with any of this really, and nothing new was revealed about Ren, what may possibly occur once they reach their destination, what will happen with the Arc Agents once they get there, or really anything at all.  What I did learn is that there is a powerful bond between a pleasure and an Edel Raid (which I already knew, and was boring the first time around), and that everyone is after Ren because she is a very rare Edel Raid, which is something that was established as soon as she appeared.

I don’t fancy it much, honestly.  It seems powerfully mediocre to me.

So.  We get a volume about training and building the relationship between Cou and Ren.  At the end, we get to go back to the fights they failed spectacularly at last volume.  There is some slight plot involved as the characters try to free a pair of sisters, but mostly it’s just explained and hinted at, then the resolution is carried over into the next volume.

While the fighting is much cooler and there is more information about the Edel Raids and how they mesh with Pleasures this time around, it’s still just… not my thing.  It still feels really shallow, even with all the development we got here.  Plus, not much happened to advance the group to the Garden they need to wind up in.  A few more volumes like this… well, I don’t know who I’m kidding because I never give up on series… but a few more volumes like this and I’ll really, really want to give up on it.  It’s really just not for me.

This volume is where things start to get better.   There’s a bit of a riddle here as a craftier class of thief goes after the Edel Raids.  His sidekick is pretty cute and also crafty… and also annoying, but I forgive her because she’s faithful.

The Arc Aile agents once again put up a pretty awesome fight here, and we even get to meet more agents.  Cou and Ren still aren’t fighting that well, but that’s to be expected I guess, since it helps development, you see.  All the characters are still kind of annoying stereotypes, but I was at least somewhat interested in the story at the end of the volume, which ended on a cliffhanger in a fighting tournament.

Yes, a FIGHTING TOURNAMENT.  Please spare me, Elemental Gelade.  I can’t remember if it was in volume 2 or 3, but there is also a hot springs scene.  We don’t need both a generic fighting tournament and a hot springs episode within the first three volumes.  Oh wait, we’ve already got a robot weapon girl and outspoken girls who tag along unwelcomed, so I guess the others aren’t hurting it too much.

That had a bit more venom than usual.  It didn’t dip that far below mediocre, and I’m sure there are a lot of people that like it (apparently the anime was very popular), and I’ve certainly read and enjoyed much worse, but I guess it’s just not my thing.

I’ve got a PILE of manga to talk about, but Elemental Gelade is the oldest.  I kind of want to cut my losses, because I’ve got… 10 volumes that I need to talk about, and I don’t have time, but I’ll get around to it.  There are gems in those volumes.  Gems like Pon-chan.  Gems like JOJO.

Anyway.  This volume is mostly about the gang stopping a bad guy who’s kidnapping the Edel Raids.  I liked this volume a bit better, because we got to see different Edel Raids all in action, and that was pretty cool.  I also kind of like seeing the Arc Aile agents in action, because they can be cool… but mostly they are annoying stereotypes.

It starts to develop the characters a bit more, but they’re still pretty shallow, and mostly annoying stereotypes.

I don’t know.  I read this one almost a month ago, so I don’t have any further opinions to offer.  Still not all that great.

Sorry guys, summer has kicked in and I have lots of events on the weekends to go to, and I have to spend a lot of time preparing through the week.  Though my company is not fancy enough for BEA or… any trade show other than CIROBE really, the consumer-oriented events we go to are awesome all the same.

…after a 45-minute digression where I surf through all the websites for my upcoming events, back to the main topic! I bought this last July when it came out, and regretted my purchase immediately.  This was not helped by my roommate, who loathes stupid titles and would ask me if I wanted a glass of “jell-aid” for months after I bought it.  I kinda knew it was going to be mediocre, so I let a couple volumes accumulate in hopes I would get into the characters.

There’s something about this series that reminds me a lot of Skies of Arcadia, but the two are nothing alike aside from both containing sky pirates.  This one’s fantasy-ish with a heavier bias towards action than coming up with… things for the world.

The first half of this volume is mostly concerned with one big action scene where the main character’s air pirate ship gets raided for the robot girl (or maybe she’s not a robot-girl, but she’s some sort of bio-experiment-type-thing, which is close enough for me)  it contains.  Of course robot-girl is an ultimate weapon that teams up with the main character and they strike out on their own journey.  Their first set of enemies, which include two energetic, outgoing and annoying females and a limp dishrag of a man, of course tag along as the main character and the robot girl (herein referred to as Cou and Ren).  They are part of an agency who are trying to round up all the super-rare beings like Ren, and they say they’re tagging along to do damage control.

Apparently, beings like Ren are a lot less rare than the beginning of the series would have you believe.  One of the three that tag along is also a bio-weapon, and of course the first town they stumble into has an agent who rounds up these weapons for himself.

I was NOT impressed by this first volume, as there was not too much original story in it.  None of the characters really stood out, and although I kind of liked the bio-weapons (called Edel Raids), nothing else about the volume appealed to me at all.   As much as I like the Edel Raids, there is not much else that is fascinating about the world that the characters inhabit as of yet.  The sky pirates may have wound up being pretty awesome, but they’re phased out in the first chapter.  After that, we get a journey-esque story with typical crooks trying to kidnap the ultimate weapon.  Who happens to be a cute girl.

Just not my type of story, again, though I give this one a lot less originality points than I gave Gals, which was also not my type of story.