After doing my
Tokyo Ghoul chapter reviews and comparisons, I decided I wanted to figure out a
good way to talk about manga and such, but full story reviews could take
forever given the amount of chapters. Thinking a bit about it all though, I ultimately decided on an idea of something
new I could do for some write ups. A first impressions series of sorts. No
longer just limited to manga, I will go through and watch a random first
episode of a television series or read the first chapter of a manga. Maybe play
the first hour of a game, or check out the first couple tracks on a cd even.
From there, I will do a little write up of my impressions, thoughts, theories, etc. Depending on how I feel about whatever I’m
writing about, I may continue and do
more write ups on it, developing into a possible full review, or I may just
drop it. So today that's what we start. Continuing with my original plan, it
will be a random manga I've never read before. I’m writing this before going to
search for a title, so hopefully what I end up with is worth it.
As I have looked,
I’m disappointed to find there is no random manga generator or anything like
that, leading me to go to a website, click a random page and a random link,
hoping for the best. It seems like this is going to be about “Fly- Tondemo
Teleport Girl Yumi.” It has an interesting name for sure. Supposed to be a
horror, supernatural, mystery manga. Judging from the cover art though, that's
hard to believe. Seems to be a short series by Jun Nishikawa. I have no idea
when it was released, but let’s not waste anymore time and just dive in to this
first chapter “Trouble Traveler Yumi.”
So I’m only a
little ways into this first chapter, but it seems the story is about a teen
girl named Yumi. She was born with a condition that makes her randomly teleport
to any location. The only problem is, she can’t control when it will happen or
where she will teleport to. It started when she was little with her teleporting
thirty kilometers away from home. As she got older, she started having to carry
a phone with extra battery, money, lights, food and other emergency supplies
because she didn’t know where she would end up. While nothing amazing, it still
seems like an interesting idea.
Going through the
whole first chapter though, I can't seem
to find any aspect of a horror element. It seems like it would just be a basic
story, with each chapter having to deal with a random teleporting instance.
With it apparently only going on for five volumes total, I don't see that changing much. Probably would add in a little of an over
arching story, but would mostly focus on these one off moments.
One thing that
really turns me away from this series is the art. While the cover was cutesy
and not too bad, that all changed when I actually started reading the
story. From the time I caught sight of
the first page, I was debating if I really wanted to read it. Even for anime
and manga standards, everyone looks so strange. What's especially funny is
(though this is just the first chapter), the character on the cover looks
different than the character on the first page,
who also looks different from our main character. I feel lied to.
If I had to put Fly
in the horror genre though, it would be
because of this art. I initially thought that the characters looked the way
they did because this would be a horror manga. The character designs would
really help add that bit of creepiness factor to the story. As I read on, I
realized I was wrong and the art was just bad. The proportions are all off and
the eyes are gigantic and terrifying, even for anime standards. Everyone looks
so wide eyed and alien throughout the story. It isn’t even like the designs
made by CLAMP where they have a unique style but okay if it works. These are
just bad.
I think this might
be the author’s first manga, and it shows. The story is basic, and something,
while probably fun, I guarantee has been done before, and the art is just bad, making it hard to want to
read. A first chapter is usually one that is a bit longer and builds things up
before hitting you with an ending that leaves you wanting more. This one
(spoilers!) ends with Yumi waking up in a casket at a funeral. It showed how
this could be a bad thing that she has going on, but it wasn’t enough of a hook
to really want me to keep going.
Ultimately, if you
could get past some bad art and wanted a basic story that you didn’t have to
invest a lot in, you could give it a shot. In the end, you can probably get the
same thing from much better written and drawn stories though than this. It is a
given she will get control of her powers. She may even find some others like
her. I don’t know if there would be a twist later that would make this really a
horror story, buy given the length, I doubt it. For the most part, it is just
predictable and not too great. Based on that first chapter, I don’t think I
could recommend Fly personally. It certainly had me wishing I was teleporting
to anywhere where I could be not reading that chapter.
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