Ragnarök
Author: Myung-Jin Lee
Genre: Manga, Fantasy
Publisher: Tokyopop
Cost: $9.99
Rating: (0 out of 4)
Availability: Widely Available
I’ve been a manga fan for a few years now, and one of the complaints I generally hear from people who haven’t read much of it is that manga is all “Eyes, cleavage, and speed lines.”
Ragnarök could definitely convince somebody that this was true.
Ragnarök follows the adventures of busty warrior Fenris Fenrir on her quest to find the reincarnated Balder, the fallen god. With his help, she hopes to change the world by making sure that Ragnarok comes to pass. Meanwhile, the gods have sent out their valkyries in an attempt to make sure that all of those who could cause Ragnarok are destroyed – thereby ensuring the gods will remain in power for another 1000 years.
There’s also a story about Chaos, his partner Iris, and fortune-hunter extraordinaire Lidia and their adventures. Presumably, this will tie in nicely with Fenris’ storyline in a later volume.
It’s hard to say exactly what’s wrong with Ragnarök as a book. I could point first to the predictable fantasy storyline. This reads like one of the many series to be based on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and not one where the players were particularly creative. Characters telegraph their alignment with every line they speak.
I could point second to the way that Ragnarök insults its reader’s intelligence. Footnotes abound, crowding the pages with information that could, in fact, have been picked up by any reader who was even half paying attention to the story or with any inkling of knowledge concerning Norse mythology.
Third, I would probably point to the art – which is capably executed, but still clumsy. Yes, the characters are solid and the backgrounds detailed. But the way in which everything is rendered piles up black line after black line. Somewhere in the muddle, you actually lose everything in the frame except for the eyes and cleavage of whatever buxom adventurer or goddess is currently featured. The speed lines are so frequently used as to be worthless, and the pages are so crowded that they might as well be solid black ink.
Fourth, I would point to weak, under-developed characters. Fifth would probably be something to do with the way the series unapologetically twists mythologies to be whatever the author needs them to be. Sixth would involve the stuttered, weak feel of the english adaptation by “New York Times Bestselling author Richard A. Knaak.” Seventh would by my failure to care about anybody and everybody featured in the book. Eighth would be the obnoxious, overdone humor.
And yes, I could continue on. But honestly, I think it’s fair to just sum it up and say that there are a lot of reasons that I dislike Ragnarök, but there’s one major reason.
It could have been so much better.