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Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane Carefree Megumi Kuroishi was living a life of luxury until the day a girl named Suzuka Kogami walked into his life. All of a sudden, Megumi finds himself kneeling at Suzuka's feet and prostrating himself like a servant! What Megumi doesn't know (until that very moment anyway) is that his family is cursed to follow the orders of the Kogami family. Megumi decides he wants to become a formal servant of the Kogami family so he can be worthy of Suzuka's love. But when wealthy heir Hiryu arrives to claim Suzuka as his bride, can Megumi even compete? I haven't read the first volume of Captive Hearts, but just before I sat down to review vol. 2 I discovered that vol. 1 was actually a collection of three stories. Volume 2 is, for the record, the continuation of the first story. Captive Hearts is an older work than Matsuri Hino's wildly popular Vampire Knight, and it shows. Her art style is recognizable here, although I don't think it's quite as pretty as it is in her current work, but more significantly, I don't think she's yet developed the knack of hooking readers that she has in Vampire Knight. This volume has Suzuka and Megumi trying to deal with the curse that binds them together: Suzuka recognizes its unfairness to Megumi and wants him to be able to love her--or not--of his own free will, while Megumi himself seems to have come to terms with the situation and just wants to be close to her, curse or no curse. Complications arise on all sides, though, ranging from the appearance of possible competitors for Shizuka's love to Megumi finding his loyalty divided against his will. It's a bit of an overload of plot twists, actually; none of them annoyed me too much individually (although some of them were a bit too predictable), but they kept taking the focus off the characters' attempts to work through their situation, and there were so many plot twists that I didn't really feel like any of them got enough development time before we were taken off to the next one. All in all, Captive Hearts is readable but shallow, and would be improved by less distraction from the characters' feelings about each other and their situation. This volume includes a one-page glossary of terms and cultural notes at the end of the book. Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
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