Alexander Daiou - Tenjou no Oukoku, by Akaishi Michiyo

[snarp]

This is the best manga ever you guys. The title means Alexander the Great - The Kingdom of Heaven! The exclamation point is strongly implied.

It’s all froofy angsty old-school-style shoujo manga where Alexander and Hephaistion look like twelve-year-old girls. Alexander gets ambushed and clutches his sword and thinks “Hephaistion!” And Hephaistion is twenty miles away and goes “The Prince - the Prince is calling me!” “Prince - whenever you need me, only say my name in your heart, and I will be there… to protect you!” Hephaistion is also telekinetic.

And Alexander flies into sudden violent rages and kills his own men, and Hephaistion looks fearfully into the distance, his hair blowing in the wind, narrating about how he is feeling a sense of deep forboding.

Oh! And Queen Olympias is draped in snakes all the time.

This manga is fabulous.

A mercenary captain with one of those special manga helmets that covers your whole face but still apparently allows you to see to whup somebody shows up and challenges Alexander to a duel, but it’s only to test Alexander to see if he is fit to be King of Rhodes! He offers Alexander his sword, and takes off his helmet, and he’s a girl! Who looks like Hephaistion but with curly hair and eyelashes, and she spends a whole flowery-screentone-bedecked page declaring herself “Saanu of Rhodes.”

Alexander is immediately enamored of her; Hephaistion feels a deep forboding. Later Alexander and Saanu will wear matching helmets, except his is white and hers is black, and they consummate their union with sprays of blood out of their enemies’ shoulders and rainbows, though unfortunately not simultaneously.

In short, this manga is so great and I wish I’d bought more than just the first volume.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Comments

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

Oh god, you found this one too? Really, the entire time I was reading it, I was seriously expecting the mangaka to come out with "LOL HEPHAISTION IS ACTUALLY A GIRL" any second. Like, seriously, looking-around-back-and-forth-are-you-fucking-kidding-me-I-don't-think-this-was-published-in-a-particularly-BL-friendly-shoujo-mag as I read!

[snarp]

I actually picked this up because I thought the serious-looking armored people on the cover were girls! I was a little disappointed at first. But this is so gloriously insane that I can make no complaints!

[(Anonymous)]

You saw girls? For real? Looking at the two I think that they are rather manly men for shôjo-characters but then I grew up reading Sailor Moon in which every man could be a girl and often turnes out to be! ^^;
Is it worth buying?

[snarp]

I think it's worth buying! Hephaistion is psychic and there's a female mercenary captain covered in flowers! Surely that is reason enough.

Maybe I wouldn't have assumed they were girls if it were from the 70s or 80s, but since it's a recent manga...

[(Anonymous)]

Just read it. It's fantastic! Now I can't wait for vol 3. And boy, the style is pretty.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

This looks familiar for some reason...

And I think you mean "This manga is fabulous."

[snarp]

Akaishi's apparently been around for thirty years! Writing similarly cracktastic things! (I completely have to read Asterisks.) Maybe you you recognize the style from some of her older stuff?

[lacrimawanders.livejournal.com]

"...is draped in snakes all the time."

Queen Olympias bathing. Queen Olympias at the gym. Queen Olympias cooking dinner. Snake performs taste-test.

[snarp]

I am betting myself a million internet dollars we will see her snake-bedecked in the bath at some point, probably ordering somebody assassinated.

[riaki.livejournal.com]

I came across your journal by chance!

I have ordered the first two books( and made an LJ entry a while back with some awful pictures I took), but I don't speak Japanese so it's good to know what is happening in the story, it seems hilarious xD

Thanx for this post <3

[snarp]

It's a great manga!