The Guin Saga: The Seven Magi is a manga adaptation of what Vertical’s press releases all say is one of the most popular fantasy series evah by one Kaoru Kurimoto. I say this not to inform you but to just keep repeating it to myself because based on what I’ve read here, I can’t understand how this series could possibly be popular anywhere on the globe.
But first a bit of background. The Seven Magi isn’t actually the entire Guin Saga, just a small sliver of it. It’s about this incredibly muscular and uber-macho king of some Arabian-tinged fantasy land with a teeny leopard’s head on top. Seriously, the fact that he’s got this animal head is nowhere near as disconcerting as the fact that said head seems way out of proportion compared to the rest of his body.
Anyway, as the Saga begins there is trouble afoot in the king’s fiefdom. Some sort of plague seems to be making hash of the citizens. Dark clouds appear on the horizon. Monsters and other nefarious creatures start lurking. Oh, and the king’s wife thinks he looks pretty skeezy with the leopard’s head and all and won’t have sex with him.
So the king heads into town and tries to figure out what the 411 is. He meets up with this smoking hot dancing girl and some sleazy pimp who may as well have (spoiler alert!) “I am not what I seem” emblazoned upon his shirt.
Lots of stuff happens. Bodies are dismembered. Evil wizards show up and are dispatched. But I never could make quite figure out who was who and why they were about their business. Even worse, I could hardly work up enough interest to care. The artist seemed to sense this as gore and extremely suggestive cleavage and ass shots are thrown at the reader whenever possible, perhaps so you won’t notice there’s absolutely no story or character development going on around here.
It’s not entirely artist Kazuaki Yanagisawa’s fault (though naturally he does share at least some of the blame). His renderings are competent enough and he handles the action scenes well enough that you never really have a problem figuring out who’s fighting who.
The problem is that you never figure out why exactly they’re fighting. Or why you should care. The Seven Magi falls victim to the same trap that a lot of fantasy stories — both Eastern and Western — stumble into. They’re so obsessed with the minute details of their world and its history, typography, geneology, etc., that they assume the reader will be as well, and thus don’t ever bother making an attempt to draw us in. There’s no attempt to acclimate the reader, no effort to offer anything but the most tepid cliches and cardboard characters the genre has to offer. It’s pretty sad when your main character has a leopard head, and even that’s elicits little more than a “so what.”
The Guin Saga: The Seven Magi Vol. 1-3
Story by Kaoru Kurimoto
Illustrated by Kazuaki Yanagisawa
Vertical Press
$12.95 each
March 7th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I recently bought the first volume of this and my main impression was “Conan with a leopard head”. Similarly, I often had the feeling that I’d be more impressed with certain moments had I any prior awareness of what they were or represented, just like with Roy Thomas’ old Conan comics. With Guin specifically, I suspect he comes off more unique in a culture where Howard or ERB style characters aren’t as pervasive as they are here.
That said, I was still interested enough to want to try out one of the actual novels (which have gotten better reviews from what I can tell), if not the following two volumes of the manga. I’m not sure if I could place why, other than a fascination with the visual (the book illustrations look a bit better too from what I’ve seen).