Jyu-Oh-Sei Vol. 1 Review

October 14, 2008 - It's an old saying, but it bears repeating: Never Judge a Book by its Cover. This is particularly true for reviewers and critics, because we see so much of the same stuff every month it's often very easy to dismiss a book out of hand just by catching a glimpse of what's on the cover. I'm not saying we're a special breed of cat or anything. How often have you passed a book by on the bookstore shelf just because the cover didn't grab you? And how often have you grabbed one because it did? However, generally when a book shows up on my desk, I don't always have the luxury of passing it by. I know, at some point, I will be expected to read it. So when I saw the handsome bishonen boys on the cover of Jyu-Oh-Sei, I knew what to expect, or at least I thought I did, and that's not my cup of tea, so I put it at the bottom of the pile. However, I'm always ready to admit when I'm wrong, and in this case, I was totally off the mark.

Well, not completely. I mean there were some gentle hints of bishonen action going on, but they were totally eclipsed by the absolutely amazing world…no, universe…created by Natsumi Itsuki. I'm getting ahead of myself here, so let's take a minute and focus on the plot of the book. Thor and Rai are twins, humans who were born in space and have never been to their homeworld, Earth. Rai is extremely intelligent, while Thor is more interested in action and adventure. They're also the sons of a prominent scientist and leader of the space colony where they live. Without revealing too much, there's a bit of political backstabbing in the colony, and the boys find their parents have been murdered. The boys are kidnapped and sent to an unknown world called "The Planet of the Beast King", which serves as a penal colony for the system's worst criminals. Beast Planet is a good moniker, as it's a daily struggle to survive. Even the plants are carnivorous and deadly.

The boys quickly learn they must adapt or die, and are shown the ropes partially from sympathetic residents of the planet, and from the "school of hard knocks" that you might expect from a world made up of convicts. Thor adapts quickly, realizing that to survive on the world of the beast, he must become a beast. His brother, Rai, the thinker of the group, has difficulties. In a world where the strong survive, there's no room for the timid or the weak, and Thor suddenly finds his brother a very heavy burden to bear.

Some of the best science fiction doesn't start out with spaceships, laser guns, or strange alien beings. It comes from a mind willing to sit and plot out an entire universe. Dune for example, lays out an entire political, theological and caste system that made that universe completely believable. You are a resident of Arrakis when you read those books, not an outsider looking in. That's the same vibe I got from Natsumi Itsuki's book. The Vulcan system (where the story takes place) has been thought out in great detail, with maps and histories behind each world. When the boys arrive on the Beast Planet, they are introduced to the different factions that live there, and the rules that guide those factions. Itsuki took a lot of time thinking about what makes this universe tick before ever putting pen to paper, and it truly makes this a book I want to keep reading.

However, I want to read it as a book, and I think this story would be so much better as a book. The joy of reading a story without pictures is that you are casting the mental picture you get as you read. Jyu-Oh-Sei has a cast of characters that I truly wish I had never seen rendered in pen and ink, because I would like to have imagined them for myself. That's a credit to the excellent writing and translation that have gone into this book, but I found myself regretting that colorful characters like the enigmatic Zagi, or the amazon-like Chen, or even central characters like Thor, had to be rendered for me by this book. I would have almost preferred to just create them myself. I supposed what I'm saying is that the artwork doesn't do justice to a story of this caliber. Really, it can't.

Jyu-Oh-Sei surprised me, but pleasantly so. It's a story with a ton of depth to it, with rules and laws that govern the behavior of its characters. It's only true weakness? It's a manga. This is a story that would work so well as a novel, but seems to fall just short of the mark as a sequential art tale. There's also an anime available, so that might be worth tracking down as well. However you choose to experience it, it's a story worth experiencing, but ultimately I found myself wishing there was a simple novelization available.

Rating	Description
out of 10	click here for ratings guide
5.0	Art Fairly pedestrian artwork that doesn't do the excellent story justice.
9.0	Writing A great story with tons of depth behind it.
7.8	OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average)