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Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane Akane is your typical teenage girl...until she swallows the Dragon Jewels and is transported to the Heian period of ancient Japan! There in the capital city, Akane learns that she has been foreordained to lead the people as the Priestess of the Dragon God! First off: I haven't read volume 1 of Haruka -Beyond the Stream of Time- , and don't have any familiarity with the game it's based on; unfortunately (at least for me, as long as I'm wearing my reviewer's hat), volume 2 is clearly not the best place to jump in. Despite being only the second volume, it's made up of three stories that look back into various characters' pasts--something I would usually expect to happen somewhat later in a series' run--and one which (I assume) takes place during the manga's main timeline. The suddenness of the backstory-dump may be due to the original story being a video game, and the probable expectation that readers are already familiar with the plot and characters, but it makes it pretty hard to form an opinion of the series. Like Red River, another series I've read recently, Haruka is about a girl who gets magically transported to another time/place (in this case, historical Japan) and discovers that she has a destiny to fulfill. Volume 2 doesn't give much of an indication of how she's doing with that; the heroine, Akane, only really appears in two of the four stories in this volume, one of which shows her meeting her friend Shimon (who later travels back in time with her). In the one story set in the series' present, she's attacked by a demon and...displays virtually no personality. In the story where she meets Shimon, the intention is clearly to show that Akane is a kind-hearted girl who'll reach out to others, but her scenes aren't enough to spark my interest in her. The art in Haruka is pretty enough (and the story has plenty of equally pretty guys, for readers who use that as a criterion for choosing series), but it's not outstanding, and it's not enough to make up for the fairly rote standalone stories. Again, I'm not judging this volume in context, and those stories may well resonate for fans of the game or people who've read from the beginning. But taken on its own, this volume doesn't have all that much going for it. Volume 2 of Haruka -Beyond the Stream of Time- includes the bonus story LOVE-X, and a unique (to me) bonus feature in which the manga-ka draws pages depicting characters saying lines submitted by readers. 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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