ReadingBifrost

www.readingbifrost.com

First off, Classics in manga form? Win. But a western manga written back to front, right to left like a traditional Japanese manga? Not so much win. Reading Japanese manga in it’s original form is a novelty, but western manga pretending to be Japanese takes the novelty out of it.

The manga itself is adapted from the original novel, which makes me happy. (Of course a few liberties were taken.) But then again, the novel is 1,000+ pages and the manga is only 336, so you can guess that there was a lot that had to be chopped. I would have liked it better if the manga was spread out between even just two manga. Having only the one volume, the story was really rushed and there wasn’t time for any background on key characters or see any depth to the plot.

The art is okay. There’s nothing typically stunning and it doesn’t seem to capture the emotions of characters quite as deeply as I would like, but it’s not bad art either.

Overall I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read the book. Even if you’ve watched the movie/play the plot is different enough to get confusing. For those who have read the book, this manga would be a nice little quick read to brush up on major points if you don’t have time to thumb through the entire book again.

(I received a copy of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)