Wanted Mini Review (manga)
September 12th, 2008 by Lianne
PG-16 for violence, sexual themes, and a single incidence of dreaded nipples; official website
Disclaimer: Viz sent me this book for free to review. [insert book title] was so incredible, it changed my life. Based on the high production values and top-notch quality of this release, I will now only buy Viz titles and will recommend that all my friends to do the same. If you are a representative of Viz or any other publishing company with the power to send out review copies, thank you for reading and please don’t feel the need to read any further down this page.
Step 1: Take The Princess Bride.
Step 2: Turn it into a shoujo (girl dressed as a boy, sexually aggressive love interest, etc.).
Step 3: Make it worse!
Okay, so that’s not very fair; The Princess Bride is one of the greatest pieces of media we all were lucky enough to get our tiny children hands on when we were children. Saying a manga isn’t as good as The Princess Bride is like saying to your mom, “Oh, dinner was good, but I had dinner in the emperor’s palace last night and it was a lot better.”
Wanted is about a girl dressed as a boy joining a pirate ship in order to find her lost love, a boy who was kidnapped by pirates years earlier. You can probably guess the twist now. By the mangaka of Vampire Knight, the art certainly doesn’t disappoint - the pirates and navy men are hot, the girls are cute, and the costumes blow my mind. (The pirate captain has this tattoo on his chest that makes me like him more-than-a-friend.) The sexiness is decent, although intertwined with a bit of danger, which makes it sexier in some cases and creepy in others. The story is decidedly coherent, the plot twists are pretty obvious but perhaps not so for everyone…anyway, it’s hard to explain why this manga isn’t better than it actually is. Perhaps it’s the somewhat lackluster characters, or the fact that it would appeal the most to girls between the ages of 14 and 17, but Viz had to rate it 16+ because of the somewhat dark sexual themes (girl on a pirate ship getting assaulted, etc.) and a gender reveal that includes non-sexualized girl nipples.
All in all, this certainly isn’t a bad manga, I just wanted it to be better. Vampire Knight is entirely composed of SQUEE, and this had only a few moments of lackluster squee. I also couldn’t help but think back to Kayono’s unlicensed short story Otoko Hime to Mahou no Lamp, which uses a similar premise with Arabian Nights and a bit of added smut - and yet still manages to be more engaging than Wanted. Since when is smut more enganging than non-smut? Kayono is a better writer of short stories, though.
Educated impression: Not a bad swashbuckling girl comic, but not a fantastic one, either. You’ll like it if you’re not expecting it to single-handedly jumpstart a sub-genre of swashbuckling shoujo. Which, you know, some mangaka should totally do. (Lianne)
Yes, I totally want someone to get swashbuckling shojo right. Vampire shojo too. Which NO ONE DOES (to be fair, novels don’t either. Twilight, the novel twin of Vampire Knight, anyone?) It would just be so good if they did. All the tasty situations one could put oneself in as a vampire… no pun intended. But seriously, vampires and pirates are cliches, but there is a lot that hasn’t been explored. The morality issues, the involving angst of being with one, and, I don’t know, some complex characters and their development?! And who says you still can’t have the sexiness?
But it’s generally very mistreated… *sigh* Oh, Otaku God, please send us a sexy swashbuckling shojo….
O.o And I’m sorry I forayed into the whole vampire thing. But I think the two actually go hand-in-hand, in that they have the same forbidden air, and get the same mistreatment, and therefore bring a lot of the same crowd. And Matsuri Hino did both, which doesn’t surprise me.
What pirates has over vampires? It’s not as dead-gone overdone and overpraised by fangirls everywhere that it stops being amusing and turns annoying yet.
Now back to my praying for both. Maybe Otaku God can nudge Ai Yazawa to that direction… Now that would be awesome! Glamor meets sexiness meets characters and plots.
Now back to my praying for both. Maybe Otaku God can nudge Ai Yazawa to that direction…
Eh, I was thinking more Yumi Tamura. Ai Yazawa can do some amazing work and all, but she’s more present-day soap stuff. I can’t see her doing a period piece or anything with a thread of fantasy.
As far as vampire shoujo goes, I really like the yaoi game Messiah…although that’s decidedly 18+. If Yuri Narushima tried to do a vampire shoujo, I think the genre would get the overhaul you so crave. Oh, man…now I’m thinking about it. *squeal*