Sunday 2 September 2012

Review: Elemental Gelade by Mayumi Azuma [manga]



During a routine raid, sky-pirate Coud Van Giruet discovers a most unusual bounty: Ren, an "Edel Raid," is a living weapon that interacts with a human to become the ultimate fighting machine. But Van Giruet soon realizes that Ren is even more prized than he first thought. When she is captured by an evil man who sells Edel Raids on the black market, Coud and the agents of Arc Aile join forces to rescue Ren! (via Goodreads)

There's always a certain amount of 'strange' guaranteed when you read manga. Plots are either exaggerated in some way (which can, sometimes, mean more awesome), and/or feature offbeat fantasy worlds.

Elemental Gelade is a unique sci-fi story, but I didn't find it that great. I don't know if this is just my problem, but sometimes I find manga difficult to follow because of jumps in time or location that aren't pointed out very clearly. Could this be an issue with translation? I don't know, maybe other manga readers can tell me if they've had similar problems. All I know is, Elemental Gelade presented me with an unforgivable amount of barriers. I couldn't even figure out whether the people who try to bribe the sky-pirates have good or bad intentions. Not to mention, the ending is very strange (even for a manga).

Rating: 2.5 / 5