Subject: Manga Reviews: Tanpanshu, vol. 1 | Author | Messages | Billy Aguiar
Posts: 84
 | Posted: 12/28/2007 6:33:17 AM | Tanpenshu, vol. 1
Dark Horse Manga
$12.95, B+W, 232 pages, Available Now!
By Hiroki Endo
Rated for 18+
Reviewed by Billy Aguiar
2 stars
Tanpenshu's first volume is a collection of three stories by Hiroki Endo, also known for the title Eden. The first story has a yakuza pimp relying on the kindness of a orphaned girl who has promised her dead body to crows. The second is about how a young girl feels about her place in her family and in the world at large, and what she decides to do about it. The final story is about a college play about the death penalty and how the cast and director express themselves through it. Of the three stories, I think the most effective of them is the first, because it has an edge of strangeness that let's one believe that a person's life can be decided by something as simple as bird living or dying. The second one, I could not follow the thought processes of the main character at all, and how far she went in reconciling herself to her life in no way seemed to match any previous behavior or hints about it. The story about college students and the big themes of their play just seemed like more of the self-indulgent 'art' that seems to the province of students. While I understood what is trying to be done, the main action of the story, the play, seemed to be the kind of fluff that is churned out daily in colleges and high schools. There are some good character bits hidden in there but the play swamps out everything else in the story. The art was more technical and realistic when compared to other manga artist, but it was not good enough to excuse the story flaws. So out of the three stories, one was a a modest success, the second was a mess and the third one was a flawed try.
This is a weekly manga review here on the CBG site, but don’t forgot to check out my other review site, Prospero’s Manga for more manga reviews.
www.darkhorse.com
Vol 1. ISBN: 1-4278-0063-4
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