Medium: Manga
Length: Three Volumes/Fifteen Chapters
Rating: PG
I don't read a lot of manga, admittedly; anime is easier to consume in high quantities, action scenes in manga can get confusing ("WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?! TOO MANY SPEEDLINES!! ...Oh. Apparently, that guy just knocked the other one down."), lots of series are eighteen volumes and still going, and while I do like the feel of a book in my hands, I'm deathly afraid of ruining the cover or the pages within by sheer stupid accident. "Why not read scans, then?", you might ask. Well, that requires me to sit in front of my computer for hours staring, scrolling, and then clicking NEXT/pressing the right arrow key over and over again (not that I don't already do a lot of sitting in front of my computer already), usually only lets me read a single page at a time (which makes two-page spreads much less awesome), and it's really easy for me to click away to do something else and forget to return. That's not my point, though: I don't read much manga. However, on a whim one afternoon, I picked up the Hollow Fields omnibus and found myself pleasantly surprised.
The story starts out with little Lucy Snow, a nine-and-a-half year old girl, on her way to a new school. There's nothing particular about her that stands out about her, really (except for the massive ribbon on her head)- her parents are dentists, she has an affinity for dinosaurs (she even carries her stuffed T-rex, Dino, everywhere she goes), and she's fairly reserved. However, she steps off the bus in the middle of a bad storm, gets wrong directions from the first person she asks, ends up running through the forest, cold and miserable, and winds up at a rather imposing factory/castle-looking building, where she decides to seek shelter. However, it's not as abandoned as she'd thought; as it turns out, she blundered her way straight into Miss Weaver's Academy for the Scientifically Gifted and Ethically Unfettered- Hollow Fields for short- a school built specifically for the education of future mad scientists. One thing leads to another, her intense desire to be dry, clean, and fed leads to her accepting a position as a student without actually realizing what she's getting into, and it only gets worse from there. While the perks of staying at Hollow Fields are pretty good (free education and food, fairly plush private rooms for each student, etc.), the whole school is as dangerous as you'd expect- And the teachers, even more so. The student with the lowest grades each week is sent to detention in the old windmill on school grounds, and nobody has ever returned.
First and foremost in things I want to talk about: design. Everything is really well designed, especially the characters. The entire school's filled with the cutest freaking bunch of evil geniuses I've seen anywhere, and the designs of the school's staff all fit their personalities to a tee. Miss Weaver looks and acts downright imposing, Mr. Croach is an irritable fop, and Miss Notch, Weaver's personal maid, has a sort of cute-yet-manic feel about her that makes her hard not to like, even in her most diabolical of moments. The school's got lots of pipes and gears to look at, and it makes the backgrounds feel like they're a part of the scenery, not just there to fill space. The entire setting is both dark and whimsical at the same time; while it's clear that Lucy is constantly in danger, it's amusing as heck to see some of the class assignments she gets. Character reactions are often spot-on perfect, and while the story only focuses on a handful of people, we get to see a lot of side characters that help make the world feel just that much more complete.
It's also fairly well-told from start to finish; my only complaints are that the very very end feels like it ties up far too fluffy for the climax that preceded it, and in regards to said climax, there is something that happens that should have had a lot more drama attached to it; instead, it's almost ignored by the party it should have affected the most (though, they were faced with a situation that was much too dire to spend too much time dwelling on it). Otherwise, it clicks along at a nice pace and it easily kept me engaged. For as light as the story presents itself, once mysteries start unraveling, the villains turn out to be seriously bad news.
Kid friendly without coming off as stupid to anyone over the age of 11? Check.
Lighthearted without being sickeningly so? Check.
Genuinely interesting, despite first appearances? Double check.
My God, I think we've regressed to the 90's, when adults could enjoy kid stuff too. PASSED.
Rating: 7/10
Recommended to: Anybody who enjoyed the movie Igor; they've got a similar tone and theme.
Length: Three Volumes/Fifteen Chapters
Rating: PG
I don't read a lot of manga, admittedly; anime is easier to consume in high quantities, action scenes in manga can get confusing ("WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?! TOO MANY SPEEDLINES!! ...Oh. Apparently, that guy just knocked the other one down."), lots of series are eighteen volumes and still going, and while I do like the feel of a book in my hands, I'm deathly afraid of ruining the cover or the pages within by sheer stupid accident. "Why not read scans, then?", you might ask. Well, that requires me to sit in front of my computer for hours staring, scrolling, and then clicking NEXT/pressing the right arrow key over and over again (not that I don't already do a lot of sitting in front of my computer already), usually only lets me read a single page at a time (which makes two-page spreads much less awesome), and it's really easy for me to click away to do something else and forget to return. That's not my point, though: I don't read much manga. However, on a whim one afternoon, I picked up the Hollow Fields omnibus and found myself pleasantly surprised.
 |
| Okay, so I guess it's not TRULY manga, but "graphic novel" is just such an... unwieldy term. And it DOES read right to left... |
First and foremost in things I want to talk about: design. Everything is really well designed, especially the characters. The entire school's filled with the cutest freaking bunch of evil geniuses I've seen anywhere, and the designs of the school's staff all fit their personalities to a tee. Miss Weaver looks and acts downright imposing, Mr. Croach is an irritable fop, and Miss Notch, Weaver's personal maid, has a sort of cute-yet-manic feel about her that makes her hard not to like, even in her most diabolical of moments. The school's got lots of pipes and gears to look at, and it makes the backgrounds feel like they're a part of the scenery, not just there to fill space. The entire setting is both dark and whimsical at the same time; while it's clear that Lucy is constantly in danger, it's amusing as heck to see some of the class assignments she gets. Character reactions are often spot-on perfect, and while the story only focuses on a handful of people, we get to see a lot of side characters that help make the world feel just that much more complete.
It's also fairly well-told from start to finish; my only complaints are that the very very end feels like it ties up far too fluffy for the climax that preceded it, and in regards to said climax, there is something that happens that should have had a lot more drama attached to it; instead, it's almost ignored by the party it should have affected the most (though, they were faced with a situation that was much too dire to spend too much time dwelling on it). Otherwise, it clicks along at a nice pace and it easily kept me engaged. For as light as the story presents itself, once mysteries start unraveling, the villains turn out to be seriously bad news.
Kid friendly without coming off as stupid to anyone over the age of 11? Check.
Lighthearted without being sickeningly so? Check.
Genuinely interesting, despite first appearances? Double check.
My God, I think we've regressed to the 90's, when adults could enjoy kid stuff too. PASSED.
Rating: 7/10
Recommended to: Anybody who enjoyed the movie Igor; they've got a similar tone and theme.
Comments
Post a Comment