Made in Heaven Vol. #01

By Jarred Pine     April 14, 2006
Release Date: March 07, 2006



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Story By: Ami Sakurai / Artist: Yukari Yashiki
Translated by:Yukon Makoto
Adapted by:

What They Say
After a near-fatal car accident, surgeons rebuilt Reiji with prosthetic parts and renamed him Himejima Kazemichi. It was a second chance at life...but there was no guarantee that his new body would last. As his artificial heart runs down, Kazemichi embarks on a journey to discover what his life really means, and live--and love--to the fullest. Along the way, he uncovers dark secrets about his past...including the organization that was responsible for resurrecting him... But the story is not always what it seems. Look for Made in Heaven: Juri, also available from TOKYOPOP.

The Review
Made In Heaven is essentially an example of how not to do an adaptation, or a romance story for that matter, which is too bad as the concept could have proved interesting.


Packaging:
The release here is pretty bare bones. The cover is fairly average looking, although the colors do look sharp. The print reproduction is okay, a little on the dark side with the tones not all the smooth in parts. There are no chapters to this book, which made it a little jolting with all the random time leaps. The only extra is a preview of the upcoming "sequel", which is the story told from Juri's eyes.

Art:
From TOKYOPOP's website, Yukari Yashiki is a yaoi and romance manga artist. She definitely likes drawing effeminate boys, but possibly to effeminate as Reiji and Juri are at times indistinguishable from each other. My main problem with the artwork here is that is doesn't have a natural flow to it at all, which maybe is a symptom of the story pacing. I rarely felt as though I got to see anything, as the panels feature a lot of close-ups or random angles that try to use a funky layout but end up not playing well together. However, because the book is extremely wordy, the large amount of text bubbles seems to interfere.

Text/SFX:
SFX are not translated. I know I'm sounding like a broken record, and there are not a lot of SFX to translate in this volume, but I really wish this policy would change. The translation uses US dollars instead of the Japanese yen, which was a bit of a disappointment. The English script is very melodramatic, which I imagine is quite appropriate given the content here.

Contents (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Made In Heaven Kazemichi is a manga adaptation taken from the original novels written by Ami Sakurai. With adaptations, it's expected that some details will be lost as a work is recreated for a new medium. Sometimes those adaptation cuts can leave the new story feeling quite vapid or like a digest, recap version of the original. Unfortunately, that is the case here.

The story is an unconventional romance that is split into two different viewpoints. The first volume tells the story from the perspective of Reiji Himejima, who suffers a near fatal accident and ends up being the guinea pig for a brand new medical technology that replaces his heart, left arm, legs, digestive tract, and reproductive organs with synthetic parts. He is now left with almost a complete makeshift body that is mostly numb to the touch. Now, this all happens within the first 12-14 pages of the book, which might have been my biggest hint at the horrible pacing that would follow.

Four years later, Reiji finds himself disconnected from the outside world, unable to cope with his new body. His heart is also on its last leg, originally only said to last 5-6 years without a replacement. In a café, Reiji comes across a woman, Juri Mitani, who is a toy designer and calls herself a completely emotionless cyborg. So begins this melodramatic relationship between a man who technically is a cyborg, and a woman who is unable to display any emotions whatsoever.

At this point, we are only about 50 pages into the book. The pace moves at such a breakneck speed that it becomes impossible to really get attached to or understand any of the characters. There are large time jumps that happen quite frequently, as well as story events that just seem randomly thrown in as if to force some feeling of conflict or development upon the reader. There are random blowjobs, conspiracies surrounding android research, a snowboard competition, secret affairs, a showdown with the police, the story is just all over the place. The manga also spends most of its time not illustrating the story, but telling it to the reader in long, drawn out, overly dramatic monologues.

Comments
While reading Made in Heaven, I could help but get the feeling as though I was getting the recap episode from Ami Sakurai's original novels. The pace is fast and furious, with no time to properly develop the characters at all. There also isn't any proper transition between plot events in the book, with time leaps and new conflicts introduced seemingly at whim. In the end this totally kills the whole romance aspect of the book, as I find myself completely uncaring for how their tragic relationship played out. This is too bad as I thought the initial premise of this unconventional romance could have been quite interesting to see properly played out.

I had a really hard time getting through this one, and I can't really recommend it at all--unless you are an addict of pretty boy illustrations and need any fix you can get.