Manga Shorts: Two Flowers for the Dragon

Quick note, meant to post this with Sunday's post, but even thought today is the last day of November regular updates will not resume until next week. Why? Because I'm working on two huge final projects for my photo projects, I have just a week and a half to do what will amount to about 15 hours of work on each plus I have a video to edit together by Tuesday as well. So I need a few extra days to get some rough reviews written up and to make some real headway on these projects, I will be so glad when this semester is over. @_@

So, onto the actual manga, I'd heard about this one for a few years, mainly that due to CMX's collaspe that the final volume would never be published, but it wasn't until I saw this House of 1000 Manga column that I became interested and at the same time the All About Manga blog was giving away a few duplicate volumes she had and I said I was kinda interested in the TFftD one. I got it, started reading the scanlations online, since it was volume five, and was immedately hooked and had to run out and buy the sixth volume before the prices on it went any higher. 

Two Flowers for the Dragon by Nari Kusakawa

A shoujo series in a vaguely Chinese, desert setting (going by the clothing style and what Shakuya’s dragon form looks like), Shakuya is in line to be the next ruler of the oasis and has been engaged since she was very young to the son of one of the local nobles as per tradition. However five years ago her fiancée, Lucien, vanished and she was betrothed to a new man, Kuwan, whom she loves very dearly despite their age difference. Trouble arises however when Lucien reappears and has only hazy memories of his life before he vanished but it’s clear that he is Shakuya’s original suitor. Shakuya’s mother decides to solve this problem by taking advantage of the fact that Shakuya’s engagement tattoos, a flower on each hand representing Lucien and Kuwan’s families, have sprouted flowers and whichever flower has the most buds at the end of the year shows which man she loves the best and who she will marry. Originally this sounded like a really contrived reason for a love triangle so I avoided the series but it really does work and Shakuya’s mother’s idea actually seems rather logical. But I really feel in love with the series because of Shakuya, she’s half dragon giving her control over water (the whole reason her family is in charge of the oasis) and can actually shape shift into a dragon and she’s never ashamed of these qualities or worries about the boys disliking her for it, it’s so refreshing and natural feeling to have a main character who’s that confident about herself. There was also a surprising amount of action in the series, I was really surprised at just how many people get major injuries, and there is a well-written plot going on in the background to tie together all the events. My biggest problem with the series though is that the last volume was never released in English and it’s near impossible to find out what happens in the very end. Scanlations stop midway through volume five, I own five and six, and I do know which guy she ends up with in final volume but I don’t know how exactly it happened. I have a guess or two how it happened but I really want to read or see it for myself, give me the last volume in any language and I will figure out how to translate it just to give myself some peace of mind, I think it shows just how much I enjoy this series if I’m willing to go to that much trouble to track down the ending to it.  

And that's the end of the manga shorts month guys! I actually enjoyed writing about all of these series quite a bit and if I do NaNo again next year I'll probably do something similar again. Until then however I have a whole slew of OOP manga I need to track down, I can hear my wallet protesting already.

 

Manga Review: Palette of 12 Secret Colors (volume 1-3)

Earlier this summer I started reading one of  Kusakawa's other works, Two Flowers for the Dragon, and heard that her other works weren't too bad either. I actually remember shelving this title when I worked at one of the branch libraries a few summers back* and when I checked the catalog I discovered that sadly that volume (number two) hadn't been returned to the library after it was checked out last October^ but the system did have volumes one and three and I was able to find scans for volume two online (literal scans, someone took the CMX copy and didn't even bother to clean up/separate the spreads into individual pages). The series is more than three volumes long (6 total) but again these were the only volumes my library had, I've heard that the rest of the series isn't terribly expensive online as well.

Palette of 12 Secret Colors by Nari Kusakawa

 Summary: Cello lives on the island of Opal where some of it's inhabitants have the magical ablilty to move color from one object to another, called palettes. They are paired with the island's native birds to train to use this ablitly but poor Cello has trouble controlling hers, will she ever become a full palette?

The Good: It's a cute little story without anything offensive in it with a laid back pace, I almost wish this was in the children's section in the library instead of the teens since I could see myself recommending it to girls in late elementary school/early middle school who want to try reading manga but aren't sure where to start. Cute really is the best word to describe the story, it's light-hearted, the problems aren't dark and gritty (there still is conflict, it wouldn't be a story without a conflict of some sorts) and it works well as lazy summer afternoon reading.

The Bad: Is there a rule that all shojo manga must include a completely different one-shot manga in nearly every volume? The one included in volume three was a whopping 30 pages long, longer than some of the chapters, and this trend just really bothers me. The story doesn't have much of a central plot so this isn't as big a deal as it could be but it does feel a bit disrespectful, as if the manga-ka/editor/publisher didn't care enough about the story to give it more time to make things work. Not that every chapter in this story is good, some are certainly weaker than others and it could use a bit more continuity between chapters as well, it just feels a little too disconnected at this point.

The Art: From the author notes in the back, it sounds like Kusakawa was drawing this manga at the same time she was drawing Two Flowers for the Dragon so the art from both series looks very similar. Her characters don't look very different from each other and the adult characters all look rather young (Dr. Guell looks incredibly young in his first appearance, more like he's Cello's classmate than a teacher at her school). Personally I would have loved to see this comic in full color instead of just black and white since it's a story that's all about color and the covers are really pretty to look at. I can't think of any manga that are in full color (I have heard of a few but only in passing) so this might be an unreasonable request but I honestly do think that having the manga in color would have given it a little more charm.


So, the manga isn't bad but it felt a little young to me and I just like Two Flowers better, I want to post a review of that soon but I'm going to try a little harder to see if I can find a summary for what happened in the final volume first. As mentioned earlier, Palette was published by CMX so it is out of print now but the prices are still fairly reasonable online (except for the last volume which is sadly the case with out of print series). 




*specifically, I remember that about once a week I would have to pull out all the manga in the teen section and reshelve them since they would get so out of order.
^I personally believe there is a special place in whatever afterlife you believe in for people who don't return library books, especially out of print ones.