Silva by Bakutendou

Silva by Bakutendou

Art and story (c) Bakutendou

Genre: Comedy Shonen, 4-Koma

Length: Two Volumes - 51 Chapters

            At first, judging from the cover I expected more of a Lucky Star look to the art, but it very much looks like Azumanga Daioh, though wether that is intentional or not I'm not sure, because the similarities run much deeper than the art. More on that point at the end, though. The art style consists of very round heads and two body types, either they are flat or they have large boobs, I don't think there is any in-between. The head shapes have more variety, but not by much. The hair is chunky style, in plenty of modern cuts but the eyes are generic ovals that seem exactly like Azumanga Daioh and the mangaka's other work. As far as detail goes, there is a lot of it when there isn't something really silly happening, and then it inexplicably disappears when something does happen. I can't really fault the art by itself, it looks good and professional, I just couldn't get over the fact of how much it looked like Azumanga Daioh, it is the only other 4-Koma manga I have read though, so I thought maybe that just was the style of the genre so I'll put the results of that search after the rest of this review.

            Silva Xenoskull Yasuda has just transferred to a new school, so she comes prepared for battle, literally, with her combat outfit and the scythe she inherited from her mother. This manga is the story of this young girl's life split between her school days and her home life as part of an evil organization trying to take over the world.

It got repetitive shortly after this joke

             Its really hard to review this manga, and since I didn't much like it, its just getting harder more I try. Like I mentioned before, I've only ever read one other 4-Koma manga before this, if you've never run into one its a little strange compared to other manga. 4-Koma, short for Yonkoma, is a bit like the comics you find in the newspaper, they are only four panels long, usually set vertically, and are very silly (a more detailed description is here). Personally, I find them hard to start, though Azumanga Daioh grew on me the longer I read it, Silva seemed to have the opposite effect on me, the more I read the less I liked it. It didn't help that this manga reminded me so much of the other that I cried out 'rip off' right from the beginning. I'm going to name a few things that are the same between Silva and Azumanga Daioh because it seemed like it was more than just the gag style was similar. Lets see, there was a strange female teacher who was irresponsible to her students and teaching, there was a bespectacled male teacher who was actually an otaku, the lead girl is new to class and is small and naive, one girl is a loud mouth and gets over excited by things, and there are more similarities but some I can chalk up to tropes so I won't mention them expressly, still just those four main things and the art put together felt way too similar. The premise, well half of it, is completely different so I felt bad comparing it so often, but I couldn't help myself. Still, for the sake of reviewing, I'll put that aside then, I said, and just read the thing as it is. About half way through the first volume, I started wondering how long it was going to take, never a good sign, any good entertainment whittles away the time effortlessly, yet here is a manga where the chapters are only nine pages long yet are not going by fast enough. Simply put, the humor wore off for me at a quarter of the way through and never really came back. True, 4-Koma aren't always very coherent when it comes to plot lines but even the silly situations began to seem reused and rehashed very quickly. The novelty wasn't enough to keep my attention, especially considering the fact that I was ignoring all the things that reminded me of something else, and I was longing for the end when I had another hour of reading to do. I also felt like the art was getting pretty lazy in the last half of the second volume, silly expressions suddenly were the only faces I was seeing as if they were the characters' only faces (the main character's kissy lips began to enrage me, actually) and the clothing disappeared more often than before to be replaced by plain white outlined bodies. Perhaps, though I have ranted enough, so I'll just simply say it:

1.5/5 I didn't like this manga except for about twenty minutes in the very beginning, then it quickly began to wear on my nerves.

Now on to my quick dive into other 4-Koma to see if my hatred is of a genre trope, not just the one manga I happened to pick up...

Hataraite Kudasai, Haruko-sensei! by Hyaku Fujishiro

Well, I didn't like this manga, either, but the art wasn't anything like Azumanga Daioh so I'll give it a quick grade and move on in the sake of research.

1/5 The subject matter was gross and pedophile-y

 

RaButa (LovePig) by Kyoushinsha Cool

 Art is also nothing alike, and I think I'll post a separate review of it all by itself later (shameless link right here) though, truthfully it isn't the same type of manga.

Sora-Roma by  Hayato Hoshimi

 Awww, this one was really cute, though also generic, it was in a shojo art way, something completely different than Silva and my problem with it.

5/5 By the way. 

 

So, even though I only read those three, I looked at lots of 4-Koma and have come to my conclusion. Yes, Silva looks way too much like Azumanga Daioh and it has nothing to do with genres. I stick to my review.