Publisher: Tokyopop
Volumes: 1/1 (Complete), OOP but not hard to find
Shoujo (reads like)
Genre: Video games, Friendship
Summary: Nanase hates herself. She leaves her old game guild and joins a new one where both her crush, guild leader Silabus, and the famous Duel Arena queen Alkaid are in, in hopes of changing herself. But how can she change when her past won’t leave her alone?
Other notes: This is a side character’s story in the .hack world.
Review: Based on the cute Shoujo style and the Tokyopop summary involving her crush, Silabus, I had thought this was going to be a romance story where she wins over his love. What it actually is, is a story about friendship and trying to figure out what defines you. The central friendship in the story is actually between her and Alkaid.
Apparently to fully understand the background of where this story fits in the .hack universe, you need to have played .hack//GU (the game). But aside from the fact I thought it was weird that they didn’t explain anything about The World for a stand alone single volume manga, at least the friendship part of the story doesn’t require any explanation. If you know basic MMORPG stuff I think it’s not too hard to follow the basic story-line.
The Tokyopop age rating on this is Teen, but honestly it feels more like a kid’s manga. The art is very cute and Nanase is painfully clueless and lacks basic social skills that elementary school kids have. It also really seemed hard to imagine that was she was originally in a PK guild, and that they got so annoyed at her leaving they harassed her afterwards. She is more like a sort of quiet girl who doesn’t draw much attention to herself in the real world scenes, so it really didn’t make much sense.
That being said, the ending was sweet, even if a lot of things don’t make a lot of sense. If you don’t dwell on it, it’s a decent story about friendship.
Recommended: I think this would be more enjoyable to Shoujo readers who don’t mind a sweet friendship story, but since it requires at least a little .hack knowledge to follow the basic plot, that probably isn’t a very large pool of potential readers. And as far as .hack fans are concerned, I doubt they would be very interested in a story about a minor side character who isn’t very important or very interesting, really.
So all in all... most people can really safely skip this one.
Age Rating: PG
Other notes: This is a side character’s story in the .hack world.
Review: Based on the cute Shoujo style and the Tokyopop summary involving her crush, Silabus, I had thought this was going to be a romance story where she wins over his love. What it actually is, is a story about friendship and trying to figure out what defines you. The central friendship in the story is actually between her and Alkaid.
Apparently to fully understand the background of where this story fits in the .hack universe, you need to have played .hack//GU (the game). But aside from the fact I thought it was weird that they didn’t explain anything about The World for a stand alone single volume manga, at least the friendship part of the story doesn’t require any explanation. If you know basic MMORPG stuff I think it’s not too hard to follow the basic story-line.
The Tokyopop age rating on this is Teen, but honestly it feels more like a kid’s manga. The art is very cute and Nanase is painfully clueless and lacks basic social skills that elementary school kids have. It also really seemed hard to imagine that was she was originally in a PK guild, and that they got so annoyed at her leaving they harassed her afterwards. She is more like a sort of quiet girl who doesn’t draw much attention to herself in the real world scenes, so it really didn’t make much sense.
That being said, the ending was sweet, even if a lot of things don’t make a lot of sense. If you don’t dwell on it, it’s a decent story about friendship.
Recommended: I think this would be more enjoyable to Shoujo readers who don’t mind a sweet friendship story, but since it requires at least a little .hack knowledge to follow the basic plot, that probably isn’t a very large pool of potential readers. And as far as .hack fans are concerned, I doubt they would be very interested in a story about a minor side character who isn’t very important or very interesting, really.
So all in all... most people can really safely skip this one.
Age Rating: PG
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