Separate book post due to distraction

[snarp]

I requested volume 1 of Bizenghast and Return to Labyrinth off OhioLINK, and they came today.

I got through Bizenghast during my shift. I wasn't hugely impressed. The writing isn't great - none of the characters really has a distinctive voice, the tone of the story's inconsistent, and the protagonist is obnoxiously passive. I would only buy her Big Decision at the end of the volume as a decision if she'd at some point previously given some kind of indication of selfishness. I was about to call her a goody-goody, but actually I don't think I can even describe her personality, or her boyfriend's, or anyone else's. There seriously is no characterization at all here.

The art's interesting, but seriously Needs Work. There are really huge shifts in quality and style from page to page. The big problem I had was with the architecture, which is kind of an important element in the story, but which the artist seems uncomfortable with. Whenever she has to draw a complex structure, the style is always slightly off of everything else - the rest of the art is all flowing and jagged-slash-twisty, but when she has to draw a house it always looks like an art-class perspective exercise cut-and-pasted in. Everything's pretty uneven, but that's what was bugging me the most.

Maybe it gets better later, but I'm not interested enough to keep reading.

I was unable to get through Labyrinth, and probably won't. Erg.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

re: Bizenghast: She does better when she has to draw things that are complex and full of detail, but she really sucks at perspective. I wouldn't have a problem with art-class perspective cut-and-pasted in if the perspective were correct, but it's not, and it doesn't work. I can see where in the hands of an experienced artist, a world like the one she's drawing would work with incorrect perspective, but that would also call for the "real-world"segments to be perfectly correct. She's also falling into the trap that plagues many American manga artists, which is relying on toning to fill space, and it's not doing it very well. It's possible for that sort of thing to work, but you have to have a better sense of it, and you have to nail the balance of blacks and whites in the inks.

I have yet to read farther than the first chapter of Labyrinth, because it read like bad fanfic to me. Not so bad that it's fun to read, just not good.

[snarp]

It's kind of a, "you have to know the rules to break them right" thing, I guess.

I skimmed through a little more of Labyrinth last night, and it very quickly develops an unattractive obsession with bodily fluids and puns. This is just too painful for me, so I'm returning it.