 Serenity #1 - 'Bad Girl in Town'
published by RealBuzz Studios.
Written by Buzz Dixon, Art by Min "Keiiii" Kwon
Review – by Psycho Ann (www.psychoteers.com)
I don't know if I'm going to make this a regular habit to review published
Christian manga as it's kinda awkward considering I know these people...
Regardless, I'm determined to do so anyway and try to be as objective as I can... Ah, who am I kidding? All of this will be subjective as heck.Because, really, the least I could do for the field is to give constructive criticism--brutal constructive criticism.
Something to keep in mind though: I'm a ruthless nit-picker. A good deal of
what I pick up really isn't that bad and a normal reader won't really notice
it. These are all solely the opinions of a manga purist perfectionist who
finds it easier to point out other people's mistakes rather than fix her
own.
So with that said, here's my review for Serenity: Bad Girl in Town.
The publisher’s blurb: "Meet Serenity, a lonely teen from a broken family
who just wants to be accepted—but who tends to lash out at others with anger
and obnoxious sarcasm. At her new school, the Christian prayer group takes
Serenity on as a "project," showing her friendship and love. . .but will
even that be enough to crack her hard shell? Sharply illustrated in
full-color, BAD Girl in Town features realistic storylines and dialogue, and
shares a solid biblical message with tween and teen girls."
My review in one sentence: decent try, should have been better considering
the potential of the people behind it.
Buzz Dixon (story) is a veteran in the comics and cartoon industry and Min
"Keiiii" Kwon (art) is the much known and admired artist of Cozypaper for
many years.
I had very high expectations for the project the first time I heard about it
from Buzz himself 2 years ago. Min Kwon is an online artist legend in her
own right. Imagine my joy that I learned she was a Christian - it just made
me admire her more.
With these two behind the manga, I really, really, thought it would be a
solid step to bring professional Christian manga forward in the industry.
There's hope as Serenity can only improve, but it was not as powerful an
attempt as I had hoped it to be.
Plot: The usual 'Christian group vs. single target' redemption story. Under
that big generalization there's not really many different ways one can
tackle that.
In Serenity, it's pretty straight-forward spiced with what I predict to be a
potentially ugly love-triangle (with themes of forgiveness, friendship,
loyalty, etc).
At points, the story almost seems to randomly insert a message/mini sermon.
Granted this mostly happens in a prayer club/bible study setting, but it
really emphasizes the "preachy-ness" more than any other instance of
Christian talk in the story.
Unless some really out there plot-twist happens, the plot isn't anything
special, but nor is it entirely bad. What really matters then is the
execution. Although, judging from the character bios at the official site,
there's good reason to believe interesting developments will arise in the
following volumes.
Dialogue: Personally, me thinks it tries to hard. Some use of teen slang
feels forced and at times really... I don't know--let me find a word...
jarring. Distracting. I would find the dialogue pretty smooth and flowing
until a random slang ("dawgz" one of the worse ones) makes me go through the
same sentence again wondering if people actually say that.
There's also way too many snappy one-liners that, for me at least, feels too
artificial and "scripted". Even how the Christian kids talk to each other in
the prayer club/bible study sounds a bit too much like a youth group drama
(the stereotypical kind as I've seen some that are awesome). It's too
"polished" and "condensed"--I will acknowledge that Serenity was probably
cutting down on the script to make it compact for the ADD generation.
Even so, I don't believe such cuts need to be made.
That's one reason why I deem manga superior: they don't dumb it down for the
audience. Manga like Naruto, One Piece, and even Yu-Gi-Oh! are read by kids
and tweens despite the heavy dialogue. In addition to that, even adults are
able to enjoy them.
The light dialogue in Serenity really didn't feel like much reading at all.
Even shonen manga, which is more action than anything, give me a longer
reading time.
All that aside, it's generally good writing (very American though, think
Archie) and there are parts I really enjoyed and had a good laugh.
Pacing: Overall, it's quick and flows nicely. At times I wish time skips
were better implied but it hardly made a dent on my reading experience. A
few instances the pacing was too quick but I do believe a faster pacing is
better than a dragging one. In a few instances, the placement of speech
bubbles were not effective (that it causes the reader to read the dialogue
in the wrong order) but it's a minor problem.
Characters: Every anime/manga needs a blue haired person, huh? Jokes aside,
they did well with the character design and the characters themselves. They
look normal (thank goodness, don't need another shoujo manga with impossible
hairdos and wacky fashion sense) and distinctive as the obligatory PC cast
(but where's the asian?).
Serenity is an annoying brat, intentionally so, and I applaud how they
handled her--she's annoying, but you know there's hope for her yet. Sally,
the comic relief and occasional voice of wisdom, is probably my favorite
character (as we both share the love for awful puns). Kimberly, the love
rival, will make a great antagonist who will be hard to hate if they develop
her well.
As for the male cast, they don't particularly stand out. Derek, the "main
bishonen" of the story, is... well, just 'meh'. Unless they develop him a
bit more in the following volumes, he's the equivalent of the
"not-really-that-needed" love interest in shonen/seinen manga.
Art: Could have been better. I expected much better actually. I prefer Min
Kwon's non-anime art because I've never been too fond of her anime-style.
That aside, it's still a solid style with a good grasp of face, race, and
age variation. That's really great since I can't tell you how many
professional shoujo mangaka can't properly draw an adult to save their
lives--nor can they draw beyond two types of bishoujo and bishonen (good and
evil) let alone a different race.
Expressions are also well done and suit the situations.
The weakest part of the art is the perspective and backgrounds/environments.
I would actually be more forgiving if only this wasn't a professional
effort.
It's very disappointing to see such weak environments since you can even
hire a person solely for the backgrounds. Budget constraints? Time
constraints? Whatever it was, the weak environments brought down the quality
sharply.
Also, I have the feeling that a lot, if not all, was done digitally. Nothing
wrong with that, it's just personal preference of mine to lean towards
"loose" manual inking. Pretty obvious since my favorite mangaka are the guys
who have messier inking than most (Toriyama, Togashi, Nihei, etc).
Color: The general reaction is that the coloring is bland. Honestly, I was
relieved it was not Min Kwon who did the coloring as I would be
disappointed: she has done gorgeous paintings with a good sense of color.
I had guessed it was done in spirit of the American comics where the inking
depicted the form and depth much more than any coloring/toning. Of course,
that doesn't quite work here due to the simple inking.
Some color choices were not good (over saturated complimentary colors for
instance) and I lamented the lack of depth and form in the coloring, as well
as the lack of texture. It would have done much, much, better if it was
just toned regularly as a b/w manga. Generally, color elevates the quality
of the line art, but in this instance it was a hindrance by making
everything look painfully flat.
Also, there should be better quality control, as coloring mistakes were
frequent.
Editing/Graphics: If I could demand one thing to be redone, it would be the
typesetting.
For speech, the leading does not match the size of the speech bubble (is way
too much most of the time) and although I can forgive the font used, the
fonts (and editing too, really) for mangascans are superior in quality. The
typesetting for the SFX are one of the worse I've seen in professional and
amateur comics/manga.
Seriously, there is much improvement to be made in this area. The
typesetting just totally knocked the quality down more notches than the
other stuff combined.
Closing that awfully long rant/review, I stand by my decision to "support"
but not necessarily "recommend". If people ask me, I would say it's more a
"rent" series than a "buy"--but only for now with this one volume to judge
on. It would appear the rest of the volumes will be something worth looking
forward to (and from me, that's saying a lot). If it doesn't improve, I will
be following and collecting the volumes regardless.
Even if I don't "recommend" Serenity, I do encourage people to read it and
make a decision for themselves. Go out and borrow/buy it!
No Star rating given. |
