Customer Reviews

Glass Wings

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Glass Wings presents three gothic, haunting tales of forbidden or unrequited love, rendered with beautiful artistry by Misuzu Asaoka. The three stories are almost Shakespearian in their tragic elements. In the first story, Hagane and Ruriha are brother and sister and both born with the `deathblood' which can infect and inflame all who come in contact with it. They are prisoners of a woman named Tsubaki, who loves Hagane and claims to have given birth to the pair, although it seems likely that birth may be in a sort of vampiric sort of manner as opposed to literally giving birth to the pair. The brother and sister merely want to live their life together and free from torment but Tsubaki says she will never let them go.

In Firefly we meet Yuinne, who comes from a race of ghoul-like creatures that the nearby villagers refer to as freaks. They need to live on the blood and bodies of dead bodies in order to survive. When Yuinne runs away, trying to escape this horrific life, he is taken in by a young village girl named Mia who is unaware that he is a freak which soon puts the pair into conflict with the rest of the village who wants to kill Yuinne as Mia tries to help him. Finally in Jion Princess we meet a sickly young princess named Yura whose condition seems to be beyond a cure, that is until an orphan girl named Soyogi, who resembles Yura finds that she has empathetic powers to take all of Yura's ills and sicknesses into her body so that Yura will live, but does Yura show Soyogi any gratitude?

As the titles suggests, Glass Wings explores the fragility of love and relationships and the often strange partnerships that come about in life, no matter how different people can be. Asaoka's art is very beautiful, particularly in the opening story. Genuine sympathy is garnered for these sad siblings who only want to live with each other without asking anything of the rest of the world. This was truly a touching story.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

There are three stories in this single-book anthology. The first, and longest, is about two pretty teenagers whose diseased blood kills on contact. Thier greatest dreams are to live together and alone, happily in love and isolated from any people they could kill. To accomplish this, they ran away from a seductive woman who may or may not be thier mother, and may or may not want the boy to be her lover, and speaks of posessing him while torturing his sister and/or girlfriend. But they return to her, and go back to thier intial routine of being seduced and tortured until they aren't anymore. In the next story, a boy is being chased by someone who wants him to give in to his curse as a corpse eater. A girl is kind to him, but he ends up alone and devastated and prodded by his pursuers anyways. Lastly, an orphan is able to siphon disease off of a princess whom she loves-despite said princess thinking her savior a pile of dirt and letting her know it with constant abuse. They come to some kind of understanding in the end, featuring two pages worth of the princess being somewhat less nasty to the orphan.

Make sense? Yeah, I didn't get it either.

That's the gist of "Glass Wings", overall darkly presented and a big jumble of confusion. The entire time I was trying to figure out what-if any-point each story really had. I suppose that the messages were simple enough, but it was really all obscured by flurries of moments attempting to be deep and poignant- it wasn't all unsucessful, but the overall feeling was hazy. The coherency simply wasn't there-the moment of clarity that could give true empathy for the characters never appeared. This was especially a problem in the first story, because it was the longest. The other two, being short, could at least get away with a skeptical "Oh. I see." quality. They didn't have the oppurtunity to mix themselves up too badly. But in the first story, tragedies and words seem to blur into each other until they're as distracting as the masses of curls and frills themselves.

The artwork is the strength of this book-the girls are all dressed in the prettiest lolita outfits imaginable and have elaborate hairstyles, frills and ringlets galore.The boys are perfect eyecandy with thier stylish leather and belts. They're all incredibly cute, even if a bit too much so.(eyes taking up 90% of a girl's face is stretching it, even for anime.) But it might actually contribute to the problem of the story-it's hard enough to try to piece together the plots without being ovewhelmed with dense panels crammed with the greatest possible amount of ribbons. The mangaka comments that she spent too much time on the clothes and not the faces-but really, she spent too much time on the drawing and not on the planning. If you plan on getting Glass Wings, be aware that you're doing it for the sheer visual beauty of it, not for the stories. They got stuck in thier own potential and never became anything incredible.

Occasionally, one runs across a book that is haunting, lyrical, artistically beautiful, and which inspires a great deal of thought long after finishing the ending. Often, these books are labeled "haunting" or "gothic," as this book was.

Too bad it didn't prove to be one of them.

All three "stories" are a big jumble of confusion, containing very little coherent plot, a great deal of gratuitous violence for no discernable reason, and no character development to speak of. The art is decent, but nothing particularly original -- it reminds me of Arina Tanemura's style, but with less development and visual interest.

This book might appeal to some people. It tries to be creepy and tragic and haunting, and perhaps it does succeed in being that way for some. But it failed utterly with me; I found myself feeling only disgust at the amount of seemingly pointless gore, annoyance at the story's lack of anything resembling original plot, and irritation at its failing to live up to the tone it so clearly was trying to achieve.

I was hoping to discover something in this book that was reminescent of Vampire Princess Miyu or Alichino or even Bizenghast -- but instead, I found nothing more than a mess.

Don't buy this book.