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Olympos por Aki
Lalvan is reminded of his jealousy every time he sees the Angel of Elhamburg. The angel kissed Madeth, blessing him the same way it had blessed the previous lord of the castle, but it kept its distance from Lalvan, even though Lalvan was the only one who could see it. Unfortunately, what Lalvan doesn’t realize is that he isn’t the only one hiding a secret, festering jealousy, and the next generation has to deal with the consequences.
My review, the short version: Well, that was kind of depressing.
The longer version: The Angel of Elhamburg was pretty, like all of Aki’s works. Also, like all of Aki’s works (or at least the two I’ve tried), it’s a bit of a downer. However, while I’d call both Olympos and Utahime: The Songstress bittersweet, I do think they had stronger bright notes than The Angel of Elhamburg. Either that, or time has softened my impression of them. At any rate, jealousy, fear, and an inability to properly talk things over tore Madeth and Lalvan apart and then put a wedge between Madeth and his son Perseus. I had hoped that Aki would allow the next generation to overcome the negative emotions that Lalvan and Madeth couldn’t get past, but instead I got a situation where the slate had to be wiped almost completely clean. Nearly everyone degenerated into something pitiful and pathetic. It was especially depressing seeing how Perseus turned out. He never really had a chance. Even his closest friend was using him.
This wasn’t bad, just kind of draining. Like the other works by Aki that I’ve read, it was very spare, character-focused to the point that world-building was vague at best. Even the artwork was that way. Aki drew beautifully detailed characters (although some of them had a tendency to look confusingly alike, like Madeth and his son Perseus - seriously, how could anyone ever think they weren't related?), but the backgrounds were often just empty white. I loved the way Aki drew Lalvan and Madeth, the way the years visibly wore them down.
I’m glad I read this, but I’m not clamoring to own my own copy. I adore Aki’s artwork, particularly the two color illustrations at the beginning, but the story is just a little too tragic for me to want to reread anytime soon. I want to shake Lalvan and Madeth for letting things get so bad, and I feel so bad for Perseus, who just wanted to be loved and to feel connected to someone.
Rating Note:
If I had to round my rating up or down, I'd probably round it down to 3 stars. The world-building was almost too spare - for much of the beginning of the volume, I think until Prima appeared, Madeth and Lalvan felt so alone in the world that I found myself wondering if the rest of the world was just a dream or hallucination on their part, because readers weren't shown any of the work it took to turn Madeth into a High King. However, I had too much of an emotional response to their tragedy to give it a flat 3 stars, so I bumped it up to 3.5.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
After successfully overthrowing the previous lord, Madeth has become the High King, something that would not have been possible had it not been for the support and efforts of his close friend and knight Lalvan. Madeth has extraordinary charisma—people easily love and willingly follow him—but he is uneducated and of low birth. He lacks the ambition and confidence that one would expect from a ruler. Lalvan, on the other hand, is exceptionally clever and capable. But despite his talents, and his peculiar ability to see spirits invisible to others, Lalvan has always been overshadowed by his friend and most often finds himself in an auxiliary role. Now that Madeth has become king, their relationship has started to fracture as long-hidden and suppressed insecurities, jealousies, and issues of trust threaten to destroy their friendship and perhaps even throw the kingdom into turmoil once more.
Although the title is The Angel of Elhamburg, the role of the angel in the manga—a spirit that watches over Elhamburg Castle, the kingdom's seat of power—is actually a relatively minor one. The fact that Lalvan can see the angel significantly impacts some of the story and character developments, but the angel itself is not an active character, merely a notable presence. The real focus of The Angel of Elhamburg is on the changing relationship between Lalvan and Madeth, with a particular emphasis given to Lalvan and his perspective of events. This highlighting of the characters is present in Aki's storytelling as well as in her artwork. Although overall quite lovely, the backgrounds and settings tend to be somewhat limited; more attention is devoted to the characters' facial expressions and body language, and to the details of their clothing and design. Because the manga's focus is so much on people as individuals, The Angel of Elhamburg often feels very intimate and personal.
The Angel of Elhamburg is told in five scenes, or chapters. I particularly liked the structure of the first which is further divided into three acts following Lalvan, Madeth, and the angel respectively. However, once Aki decided to expand the manga, the narrative deviates from this initial structure and becomes more linear until the last scene. The final chapter is a little confusing at first since its use of flashbacks and flash-forwards obscures the story's chronology. The Angel of Elhamburg is a bittersweet tragedy. With the manga's classical feel and theatric nature, I could easily see it being adapted as a stage production. The rise and fall of a kingdom serves as the backdrop for the interpersonal drama and conflict, which is the true heart of the manga. There is a story, but The Angel of Elhamburg is probably best described as a character study. The Angel of Elhamburg excels in conveying the depth of Lalvan and Madeth's individual personalities and fears, ultimately showing an established and evolving relationship that is believably complicated.
Experiments in Manga
Utahime: The Songstress is composed of two unrelated stories, the primary “Utahime” story that takes up two thirds of the volume and “Darika,” which takes up the final third.
“Utahime” is about a land that is protected by two beings, the sovereign and the songstress. Traditionally, the sovereign is male and the songstress (or songstresses, since there are many) is female. There is an uproar when the next sovereign is born and she turns out to be female. What few know is that there is also a male songstress.
Aki seems to like beginning stories by showing readers the characters' “present” and then revealing, via flashbacks, what motivates them and how they got to where they are. At the beginning of “Utahime,” we learn that Kain, the songstress, once had a twin sister who was thought to be the songstress. Kain had run away from home and returned only after he began hearing something discordant in Maria's voice. Unfortunately, he was too late. Maria was dead by the time he made it back. Kain and Thomas, the village chief, hid Maria's death by having Kain secretly act as the songstress.
The story then flashes back to Thomas, Kain, and Maria's childhood. Seeing the blossoming affection and love between Thomas and Maria, a jealous and awkward-feeling Kain opts to run away. Over the years, Thomas searches for Kain, and Maria enjoys Thomas's company, until they learn painful things about their village and the role of the songstress that drive a wedge between them.
This story's mixture of humor and bittersweetness was nice, and I loved the artistic detail involving Maria and Kain's earrings (each has one, until after Maria's death, at which time Kain wears both his and Maria's earrings). However, it wasn't on the same level as Olympos, for a couple reasons. One, the premise had holes you could drive a truck through, and, two, the ending wasn't quite complete.
For most of the story, I wondered “What is it that the songstresses actually do?” Supposedly, they protected the country, but protected it from what? And how? The country appeared to be peaceful, and, from what I could tell, the primary effect of a songstress's voice was to charm people. Kain used his voice to convince rich women to give him money and men to gamble against him and lose. For years, Maria acted as a songstress despite not being a real one, and her part of the country didn't fall to ruin. Why did it take so long for people to start asking “Is this really necessary?”
As far as the ending went, Aki almost managed it but fell a little short. Thomas got a bittersweet ending that wrapped up his various emotional and story threads. He atoned for the wrongs he felt he'd committed, and he finally got to say what he wanted to say (even though the person he wanted to say them to was no longer around ::grumble grumble::).
Kain, on the other hand, was left adrift. He'd chained himself to the his secret songstress position so that he could, in some small way, make up for his part in his sister's death. It was basically a kind of self-punishment. The way things wrapped up meant that he didn't even have that anymore. Readers got to see his shock at the news, but then nothing. What did he do next? Had he forgiven himself enough to be able to move on? There was no way to know.
“Darika” is the story of two young men at an elite school. One of them, Roy, has been given the task of watching over the other, Darika. Darika is bright and happy and has no idea that Roy has been given a grim task by the head of the school. Supposedly, Roy's actions are meant to keep a demonic being in check and possibly allow a "child of God" to be created, but he begins to question what he's been told.
Honestly, I wasn't sure what to make of this story. As in "Utahime," we're shown another world in which people carry out a horrible task without question, because they are told it's necessary. By the end, it appears as though that task may be useless. Whereas the people in "Utahime" took steps towards fixing this situation, in “Darika” Roy accomplished nothing. He protested what was being done but, as far as I could tell, everything continued on as before. There wasn't even any indication, one way or another, that Darika would remember him and what he'd tried to do to help. So what was the point? Or was the point that there was no point? Either way, I was disappointed.
Utahime's primary story was okay, but I'd recommend Olympos over it. “Darika,” on the other hand, was a let-down.
Extras:
A couple pages of author's notes. Aki frets over “Darika” not being very good and wishes she'd (?) gone with her instinct to give Kain an older brother instead of a sister.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
I wasn't very impressed with Olympos, at first. It was slow-moving, it seemed somewhat episodic in a "meh" sort of way, and the characters confused me. The character designs were usually very pretty, but a few of them were a little hard to tell apart – Ganymede looked like Artemis, except with a hair ornament, and Apollo's darker hair was the primary reason I could tell him apart from Ganymede (the person on the cover is Apollo, by the way). Backgrounds were almost nonexistent – it was a little like watching a bunch of actors on a very minimalist stage.
The story focused primarily on Apollo and Ganymede. When readers are first introduced to Ganymede, he is almost without hope. He cannot die, and he has been trapped in Zeus's changeless miniature garden for ages. Apollo brings Heinz, a young mortal man, to Ganymede in order to snap him out of his funk and make him more interesting again. Heinz's great wish is to become rich and marry Mina, his sweetheart. Apollo has told him his wish will be granted, if he can convince Ganymede that there is a way out of the miniature garden – in order to leave, the two of them must go to the edge of the world and jump off.
Ganymede initially struck me as dull. My impression of him changed after a flashback showed exactly how he came to be in the miniature garden, and what it cost him. Then, for a while, I disliked Apollo. Another extended flashback caused me to reevaluate my impression of him, as well.
Ganymede was a young prince who'd been torn from his family and had, without fully understanding it, permanently lost his brothers, Troy, basically everything he'd ever cared about. He wanted to leave the miniature garden and, eventually, didn't really care what he needed to do in order to accomplish that goal. He teetered between depression and hope.
Apollo's primary motivation was boredom. He didn't understand mortals and couldn't understand Ganymede's depression. A flashback showed what his life used to be like: he spent his days conversing with his beloved sister Artemis and didn't care about anything else. His unchanging existence was interrupted by Iris, a naive and pleasant mortal girl who, despite her stupidity, still managed to capture his interest. However, once change was introduced into his life, he couldn't go back to the way he was. This was the part of Olympos that began elevating it from “okay” to “good,” for me.
Although these characters shared names with figures from Greek mythology, they were different from those original figures. It wasn't that Aki rewrote the mythology – from the perspective of the mortals in Olympos, I think the mythology was still the same, it was just that they got things wrong.
Instead of the original Greek pantheon, there were only three primary Gods: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Zeus was of the sky and was mostly uninterested in the things below him (so, basically uninterested in everything). Poseidon was of the sea and was constantly annoyed and looking to overthrow Zeus, not that he had any kind of workable plan in mind. Hades was of the earth and questioned everything, to the point that he even caused Apollo to reevaluate what he assumed was the truth.
I'm still not sure how Apollo and Artemis fit into this world. What caused them to come to be, and, if they existed, why didn't all the other Greek gods exist as well? That's one thing about Olympos – it leaves a lot of unanswered questions, and it doesn't really have an ending, just...acceptance, I guess.
All in all, this started off slow and a little boring, and then grew on me. I'm glad I read it, even if I now feel like I need to spend a few hours immersed in my fluffy, happy Nora Roberts book.
Extras:
Several full-color illustrations (which are gorgeous), a few pages of author's notes, and two pages of mythological and historical background information.
(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
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