Crimson Hero by Takanashi Mitsuba

Crimson Hero by Takanashi Mitsuba



           Genre: Shojo Sports
           Length: 20 Volumes - 81 Chapters with a few extras and two one-shots



           Same mangaka as Akuma de Sourou (The Devil Does Exist) so I knew what the basic art style was going to be like, lots of spiky hair and punk styled clothes. Still, this manga is obviously written after Akuma de Sourou because the style had matured. The distracting blush lines were reduced and faces are significantly slimmer. Clothes are very well done, along with the hair, there is the spiky-spiky hair that I expected but it wasn't everywhere. Body motions and poses were good but there were a few body issues that bother the eye from time to time. Firstly, in the beginning there were many manly girls that I should have assumed were girls considering this manga is primarily about women's sports teams but kept thinking they were men because they looked like men due to their very wide shoulders. Perhaps its largely, because they are volleyball players, most of the cast is really tall and I'm sure that made proportions hard to nail. This man/women issue resolved itself eventually, the faces are what really confuse you and they become much easier to distinguish later on. What didn't help was the wide hips often given to men and women alike, making the full body shots look rather dumpy. This artist also has this way of drawing mouths that really has dynamic motion but that leads to gaping mouths on every panel, or if not gaping, showing more teeth than necessary. Most of the time you don't notice the mouths, until a very dramatic part gives you more mouth than anything else. Still, nothing devastating, the artist has much improved her art and integrated her style seamlessly into what can pass for a trendy type of art style. It feels more like Akuma de Sourou in the beginning but by the end it seems very grown up. All around, its good to look at.

Art and story (c) Takanashi Mitsuba

           Nobara is the first daughter in a family that runs an old-style Japanese inn and is assumed to take over for her mother when she grows up, but Nobara can't find anything girly in herself and she can't stand dressing up and being graceful. All Nobara wants for now isn't lessons and serving customers but playing volleyball! She even entered a high school with an excellent volleyball program so she can spend her school days on the court, despite her mother's refusal to acknowledge her dream. Yet, at the first day of school, Nobara can find no trace of the women's volleyball team anywhere and when she asks she is informed that such a weak team was disbanded the year before. That won't stop Nobara from having her rose colored volleyball school life, even when it causes her to run away from home, Nobara begins to assemble enough people to recreate the volleyball team at Crimson Field High and share her love of the game with those around her. To survive she may have to work as a house mother for the male scholarship students' dorm but she will do anything to play volleyball.
           Be aware, at twenty volumes you are in for a long haul of shojo. I'd say it's about 50/50 in terms of volleyball action and school drama, though the line does tend to blur at times, that puts it at a lot less sports action than a shonen sports manga. Personally, I liked that, this being the first girly sports manga I've read besides Girl Got Game and that manga is something completely different. The story itself is sports cliched, but when you want to read a sports manga you expect these things. There is a true humanness in this mangaka's characters, and in Crimson Hero you get more of the same, seeing people by their flaws makes for good love stories after all. Sure, there is some shoehorning on a few of the rival teams where you suddenly must care for the opponents (what kind of sports manga would it be with out that?) and there were a few I simply couldn’t care for, but that was only when it was whole chapters about characters I wasn't going to see again. There is a big cast list too, and after a while some of the backgrounders, when spoken of by name only, got mixed around in my head. Big cast lists do lend to re-readability and this manga is published in English so that is probably more of a positive than negative. My main problem with Akuma de Sourou had been the long waiting mixed with a sudden fix that did match the length it took to get there, but with Crimson Hero I didn't get that feeling as much. It helped that the tournaments and such kept the time line moving, but all the same, it isn't as painfully drawn out as Akuma while still having the heavy dramatic read. Sometimes its hard to read that type of romance but the sports sections help things along, too. Here and there there were some word bubbles composed in a confusing manner and I would read them out of order, it was annoying at the time but looking back it didn't much effect my reading enjoyment. The action isn't the best, its actually impressive at times, but several instances the volleyball matches are carried through with still shots and score boards changing numbers. Hmmm, I feel like this review sounds really negative overall but this is a really good manga that, though it feels twice as long because of DRAMA, is a joy to read.



          4.5/5 Really Recommended

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