Instant review: some crap I bought
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
In order:
Touhou ~ Silent Sinner in Blue (ZUN x Aki Eda) – I was going to complain that this has really bad art, but then I went back and checked the magazine scans and they actually look way better. Maybe they took out all the halftones because they couldn’t afford good printing or something??
-> 
By ch9 the art really is bad though, pretty much none of the pages have backgrounds. ZUN should’ve got flipflops to do it instead :(
Touhou ~ Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red (ZUN x some dudes) – This has pages from other better artists, but pretty much all of it is already available translated. There’s a long article in the back about the design of Touhou (lol) which I haven’t seen anywhere else yet, but I haven’t really looked.
Roman (Sound Horizon x Yukimaru Katsura) – The best manga adaptation of a concept album I’ve ever read. This one covers tracks 1 (Asa to Yoru no Monogatari), 9 (Yorokobi to Kanashimi no Budoushu), 5 (Hoshikuzu no Kawahimo), 7 (Tenshi no Chouzou), and 3 (Miezaru Ude, best track) in that order.
The text of the first two chapters is pretty much copied from the lyrics sheet, which means all the scanlators probably read the first chapter and gave up since every line is a nonsense metaphor with random furigana abuse. This also produces some strange effects since the conversations have choruses in them. After ch3 someone else starts rewriting it, which I think hurts it – the last two chapters have huge walls of text for narration, and it turns out the ending of Miezaru Ude is really stupid when you fill all the details in. The art has nice moustaches though and it’s cheap, so you might as well get it if you liked Roman. Seriously considering translating it (= making kransom translate it).
Ark isn’t actually a Sound Horizon manga, it just has the same name and plot as one. I haven’t read it yet but the main character apparently wears complicated gothloli outfits all day and night and is kind of hot. Also her friend looks like Souseiseki except is a man and has yandere eyes. I don’t remember why I bought it…
UPDATE: I’m told Ark, the Sound Horizon song, does have a manga adaption. But I don’t know where to find it, sorry!
THE MOST SKILLED SURGEON looks good – ch2 introduces the American stereotype as a giant bodybuilder surgeon named Ashton Kenneby – but I’m too lazy to look up all the heart surgery words to keep reading right now.
Is it me or does WP not let you change thumbnail sizes? I’ll make some bigger ones by hand sometime.