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Rumic World Manga
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Title Info
- seen: 1-3 of 3
- type: manga
- grade: watchable
- people: Takahashi
- made: unknown
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
Another collection of Rumiko Takahashi short stories, these ones being early in her development, including her first published story. It's quite dull reviewing RT short stories, as she has a strong style and her material is common enough that you probably know the extent to which it appeals to you. She is a master of character and humorous, clever story but the short story format robs her of the ability to develop the characters. And considering that her strength is the ability to generate such great characters over the long haul this is a serious limitation. The stories don't seem to have a unifying theme, being quite well spread across many genre's.
The first book deserves notice as being by far the strongest however, containing her very first story as well as the seed stories for the animes, Maris the choujo, Fire-tripper and Laughing Target. In most cases the original story has something to add to the anime experience. The second volume is almost completely dominated by the `wasted minds' mini-series, a sort of get-smart'ish, super hero parody, which is fun but fairly light-weight. The third volume has a better mix, with quite a few comedy stories and a story with RT herself (looking after a cat) although not as strong as volume 1.
The art style is already fairly mature, you can see all the elements of RT's style, and is more than sufficient. Her writing is always interesting, as is her sense of character and ability to represent action. These are solid collections of good stories (although vol.2 is the weakest). RT fans will snap them up, most people will probably enjoy the read, but many will be tempted to spend their money on the many more modern instances of Takahashi's abilities.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:24 WST 2009