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BASTARD!! #1
"Wizard!! Part I of II"
Mildly Recommended (5/10)
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Viz Comics
Writer/Artist: Kazushi Hagiwara
Translator: Kaori Kawakubo
Touch-Up/Lettering: Susan Daigle-Leach
Editor: Jason Thompson
Price: $3.95 US/$6.50 CAN |
It's clear that Hagiwara and I are coming from very different places, because while we share an appreciation for role-playing, I don't have any particular attachment to the fantasy genre and I generally don't care for Megadeath, Metallica or any of the other heavy metal that influences his work. It was therefore pretty unlikely that I was going to be overly impressed with Bastard!!, which takes a love of the fantasy genre and
heavy metal as a given, and also contains more than a few of the negative
stereotypes associated with manga, including over-the-top violence, young
protagonists and a bizarre incestuous relationship that is the center of the
book. The artwork is gorgeous and the main character of Dark Schneider every bit
as outrageous and amusing as promised by advance hype, but too many elements
didn't click with me.
It's a little hard to judge
the tone of the book entirely from this first issue, however. The first part of
the issue, aside from some glaringly unfunny material with the clumsy Lucien, is
played as fairly straight fantasy, and it left me a bit cold. However, whenever
the magician Dark Schneider makes an appearance, I tend to be both amused and
appalled by his antics. As you may have guessed from the name, Dark Schneider is
a bit of a comical figure. What you wouldn't guess is that he's crude, young and
impulsive, not the stereotypical old schemer you expect from evil wizards, and
he's really the driving force of the book. His dialogue is very much in the
modern vernacular, laden with cursing, and I found him to be an anti-hero in the
mold of Lobo or other sometimes-popular rebel characters.
Actually, his dialogue stands out as one of the things that grabbed me about Bastard!! in general. Though the story is pure fantasy
genre, the idioms and methods of speaking are more modern, and rather than being
jarring, it's refreshing. Of course, that's not to say the dialogue was ideal...
some of the exchanges between lead female Yoko and male lead Lucien are
painfully cutesy, and indeed their entire relationship (and in fact the
character of Yoko herself) grate on me with every page.
In general, I found a lot of
the story when Schneider wasn't on panel to be grating. For the most part, the
actual story seems like it's trying too hard to be clever and funny, with asides
in the panel borders and somewhat obvious slapstick comedy. Hagiwara has great
comedic timing in his work with Dark Schneider, but for whatever reason, it
hasn't yet translated to the rest of the book.
One area where I don't have
any complaints, however, is in the artwork. Hagiwara's work is often light on
backgrounds, tending more toward speed lines or empty space to emphasize the
figures, but his character work is fantastic. The story is full of cute kids and
enormous monsters, and when Hagiwara does decide to show off with a landscape or
a magical power blast, he does it with flair and style.
Bastard!! is a mixed bag at best, but Hagiwara has at
least one solid character to his credit, and given the appreciation that this
series has amongst the manga fan community, I'm inclined to give it a chance to
change my mind about its overall merits with further issues.
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