Saturday, March 21, 2015

Dusk Story - Tasogare Monogatari and Roe by TONO




Dusk Story - Tasogare Monogatari by TONO




Genre: Supernatural Josei

Length: 2 Volumes – 13 Chapters





Art and story (c) TONO




Art has a floating and ephemeral quality that I found so intriguing I looked up the author to find a manga to read. Its a bit of an older style of art, but I highly enjoy this particular type of esthetic. The color illustrations were very beautiful to look at, and the art is very unique. Faces are wide eyed and closed lipped, and the bodies are thin limbed. The hair is very expressive, floating along with the clothes to make very beautiful art. The backgrounds were extremely sparse, but not really distractingly so. Clothes weren't very detailed, either, actually the lack of detail is a bit of draw for the flowing art but it can easily pass into looking amateur. Faces could be a little hard to read, though, which happens to be the one thing I took offense to in this sketchy type of art.



Takt can see ghosts, illusions, and memories of people when they are strong enough and though he tries to stay out of the way of many of them its hard to ignore things that pull at him so tightly. Living a life filled with other people's tragedies, come into his world and have a taste...



When I found a random cover of manga by this mangaka, I had to look her up and read something by her, though I deliberately picked the oldest one I could find so that I could see the core of her art before looking at newer manga and I don't think the art disappointed me at all. I did wish though, that the chapters of this manga hadn't been so choppy, they were only nineteen pages each (typical length for weekly published manga) but each one is it's own contained story so there were a few bits that aren't really explained. Still, I found it highly enjoyable and I would definitely find another manga by this mangaka to read just on the art alone. The plots where interesting, too, and varied even though they all revolve around a person who can see ghosts which is an old, OLD plot hook, but Dusk Story still managed some interesting new takes on the trope. Takt is mysterious even to the reader until you get further into the story, slowly developing as your understanding of his world does. Though this also adds to the tragedies of the manga, and it can be down right depressing at times. The ending is abrupt though, just like the rest of the story. I also think that the 'josei' genre is purely just because of the magazine it was originally published in because there's no romance in it to label it so. The format of the chapters is really the only reason I did not fully savor this.






4/5 I could see reading this again and enjoying it just as much.







And, because I was curious about this author:




Roe by TONO






Genre: Josei Comedy

Length: One Chapter – 10 Pages



Art is much more polished from the previous (no surprise, it being something like fifteen years after Dusk Story) the facial expressions and body movements are clear and easy to understand, and the clothes are detailed much better and contour to the bodies they hang from. It has that same floaty and fantasy feel but in a much more polished setting. The backgrounds are still lacking, though.



A tale of two friends. One friend is always eating piles of food and able to afford everything she wants, while the other is broke and, despite always being on a diet, fat. So when the poor friend is invited to work like the other so she, too, can be skinny and rich, she goes to her friends house to see exactly what is up.



Silliness, TONO clearly likes to be very silly. Its a wonder these two women are friends but it makes for a tale of jealousy and comedy that you probably won't see coming. Definitely not a waste of my time, I'll remember it forever.





5/5 The art is even better than before!




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