Quick review: Otogi Zoshi

[telophase]

A couple of weeks back I picked up Otogi Zoshi, a manga made from an OVA apparently, when I made a manga run to the store. It's set in Heian Japan, and features a feisty younger daughter^[TM] who chafes against the restrictions of her social position and who idolizes her brother. Her brother is a military commander-type person and was sent to raze a village that harbored bandits. The few survivors of the village naturally have a grudge. One day the girl sneaks out and follows her brother, and starts a chain of events that theoretically lead to plot, but I'm not sure because I was so bored by all of it. None of the characters really stand out as unique, and none of them are interesting. I picked it up because: hey! Heian Japan!, but that's not interesting enough to carry the story. The art is inconsistent - some parts of it I really like, such as profiles, but the mangaka is incredibly inconsistent when it comes to things like head sizes, which can be seriously small, and it bugs me. I may flip through book 2 when it arrives on shelves to see if anything interesting happens or any of the characters gain personality beyond the broadly stereotyped, but for now: not recommended.

(I suppose I could use the new Vox account to post book reviews: you can easily post images of books from Amazon.com there.)

P.S. Watch this blog. I may have something to tell you in 24 hours or so. XD