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

Comments

[marith.livejournal.com]

Huh. We have just started watching the anime series of Otogi Zoshi, which either starts later in the plot or has an alternate plotline. Feisty younger sister on a mission to save her brother by recovering the Shiny Plot Token from the Monkey Ninjas. Also court intrigue involving the Ministers of the Right and Left and Abe no Seimei, and a wandering dance troupe observing the corruption of the times.

Beautiful animation that I wish I had the technical terms to describe - actually, last night I was thinking that it'd be very cool to see an analysis of the visuals similar to the ones you did for the Saiyuki manga.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I get the idea that maaaybe in book 2, Feisty Younger Sister is going to set off to retrieve the Shiny Plot Token, but book 1 seems to be all setup, and not very good at that. The eight chapters or whatever say: Here's Feisty Younger Sister! She's feisty! See how feisty she is! Here's Idolized Older Brother! Isn't he cute! He kills people in a village offstage! Here's Disgruntled Survivors! See how disgruntled they are! Did we mention the feisty younger sister? And that's it. I kept hoping for foreshadowing or characterization or ethical dilemmas (the Older Brother being nice, yet slaughtering everyone at his government's command is the obvious one, but Feisty Younger Sister doesn't actually appear to be bothered by it) to be brought to the forefront, but nope.