Lost Seven

I've got a busy week so I just went ahead and reviewed a manga at the beginning of the week instead on the dead last day. Its not often I get my butt off my ass and do that! I felt like I've been reading a lot of shojo recently so I went for something with the complete opposite feel to it. The name sort of gets lost in that long title below, doesn't it?



Lost Seven   Story by Kazuki Nakashima and Art by Ya-Seong Ko

Genre: Shonen, Fantasy
Length: 4 Volumes – 21 Chapters



           The art has a Fullmetal Alchemist feel to it, not in the main characters but in the demons and the like there is a real similarity; it gives off a medieval feel in most respects. There's a lot of variety to the character designs as well, sort of a 'one of each personality type' scenario, as well as being a mix around of different cultures in both the clothes and weaponry. As an action manga, the fight scenes were alright, none of the fights were very long so they there wasn't much chance at getting lost during one. The faces are very expressive and several characters looked very beautiful, the hair had excellent movement and shape, and the clothes were very detailed and interesting to look at with out being distracting. I think the only things I found distracting were my own dislikes, really, such as hair that hangs across the face like this:

Hair doesn't work this way.

Any manga I've read with hair that does that, I have mini rage attacks about it. Just comb it to one side or the other! Augh!! There is also some questionable armor choices, too, that gave me trouble, I couldn't decide if one guy's armor was cool or really dumb, and after looking at it for several volumes, it ended up being dumb, because, look at the stupidness of his helmet:

At introduction: Oh, is this guy cool?

He turns head: No, no he isn't, that helmet is dumb.

Really look at it. Besides that, the art is very solidly well done in every area, and is really attractive so that you are easily drawn in.
           A group of seven warriors choose exile from their tribe to restore a princess by the

name of Snow White to her castle, where an evil queen has usurped the throne and is planning to use the sephiroth mirror to overrun the world with demons. Everything goes smoothly until they actually kill the queen, though, and in the process loose their princess, too. Can they recover from such a defeat?
           This manga has a lot of things going for it, the art is good, the plot is sprinkled with fairy tale references in the character names and chapter pages, and the characters have original and interesting dynamics, still, Lost Seven is only in the midway range. Four volumes is just about right for the amount of story there, but it isn't executed in the best manner. A little too much explaining sometimes and not enough other times. Throwing you in with no information beginnings aren't necessarily a bad thing, but then the characters weren't given enough motivation when they were re-introduced, in fact a little bit of getting to know characters would have

helped greatly in the following bits of drama. Then the ending was rather suddenly started and rushed, and even though you get a nice finale in the end, all the short battles are a little boring and break up what could have been a better ending. Even the betrayals are rather sudden and not fully explained, making their drama hollow and unengaging. The fact that the main character is the 'stupid jock' type also doesn't really come across except at the very beginning, from there he sort of errs into the 'bad ass loner' type so his image gets mixed up pretty bad. The humor isn't there to corroborate with that character trait, either. The fairy tale influence really is the best part of the story, but even that isn't consistent so sometimes its hard to find it. Its more of a German influence at times than its straight up fairy tale, and I know Grimm fairy tales are German but like the rest of the story, its just kind of half-hearted in its approach. Its not a book you throw away in disgust or anything, but its not exciting enough to be a page turner, either. Its like the author thought up the first part the story but had a hard time really cinching it into a conclusion when it came down to it.


2.5/5 A little jumpy and rushed.

I'd have a menacing aura, too, if I had to wear that helmet.