Artwork:
The happy, friendly style of art is immediately likable and the perfect compliment to the very amusing story. Characters are always fun to look at. Even the villians tend to look more buffoonish than genuinely evil. The artist is very good at showing physical motion, whether it be a swashbuckling display of the ninja or samurai arts or just people falling on their bottoms. And he draws some of the funniest explosions I've seen outside of Road Runner cartoons.
Text/Translation:
The translation handles the characterisations well. I particularly like the way the heroine's goofiness and simple enthusiasms come across, and also the hero's gruff reluctance to let anyone know what a nice guy he is. But the whole cast of personalities comes through clearly, and the dialogue-oriented comedy works unfailingly, at least as far as I can see. The sound effects are translated by accompanying text. Various fonts are used to approximate the original effect in each instance, and used excellently. A really bang-up job on that front.
Contents: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ninjas, like dinosaurs and pirates, automatically improve any story they appear in. <i>Mamoru</i> has an entire family of ninjas in it.
By all rights I ought to be able to leave the review at that, but somewhere in the dark and cynical side of my psyche, there lurks the nameless suspicion that some readers will still be somehow unsatisfied with that assessment, and will demand to know more about the book. Very well. The flesh is weak; one must make allowances.
Long ago, an emperor who loved konnyaku appointed a line of ninjas to protect the greatest konnyaku makers in the land from harm, so that their delicious secret would be preserved for future generations. Several future generations later, the Konnyaku family is still under ninja protection. And boy, do they need it.
Mamoru the shadow protecting ninja (and our hero) has his hands full with the daughter of the family. The ancient tradition, passed down from father to son from time nearly immemorial, has left the poor boy with the task of looking after Yuna Konnyaku, the bullseye in pigtails. This Yuna girl is a ditz; but even saying that doesn't give you the whole picture. Her ditziness is a double-edged kind that not only causes her to endanger herself accidentally, but to completely miss the obvious fact - and without Mamoru's constant vigilance, it would be <i>painfully</i> obvious in the most literal sense - that she has gotten into danger at all.
As you have probably guessed by now, <i>Mamoru</i> takes place in a sunny corner of Japan where boring ol' reality doesn't poke in its big dumb nose very often. It creates a wonderful atmosphere of light entertainment and a cast of characters that are always a pleasure to watch. Mamoru is every inch the heir to a distinguished line of ninjas, master of every fighting technique including the one that lets you stand so you are always silhouetted by the full moon. He nevertheless conceals his deadly persona behind swirly coke-bottom glasses. Yuna is a klutz, and, as previously mentioned, a ditz; but she's a very funny ditz, and one with a sweetness and innocent enthusiasm that are difficult to resist. (Especially for her guardian.) We also meet Yuna's spunky best friend, and a female samurai assassin trained in the traditional style, who will hunt her target to the ends of the earth - if she can tear herself away from those tantalizing sidelong glances at the normal, girly type of life she's always dreamed of. And there are glimpses of a real spark of genius in the all too brief moments where we get to see two ninjas who are even more awesome than Mamoru: his parents. I'm trying to think of another manga that has parental characters I want to see more of...and I'm coming up blank. Even the dog in this family is cool.
Yes, all of this is, if you tiresomely insist, formulaic. But the formula works: when the ingredients are mixed, things happen. This first volume is chiefly concerned with the efforts of a gangster to have Yuna bumped off for being an unintentional witness to his drug deal. Watching Mamoru fend off runaway carts of flour, midnight abductors, and the dishy samurai is a lot of fun. But the book achieves an even higher level when it takes the characters on a side trip. In the last two chapters the main characters go to the zoo to see the penguins ("Whee, penguins, penguins!") - unaware that all of the animal trainers at this zoo are assassins hired by the (increasingly exasperated) gangster boss. Mamoru and his dog are at the top of their game here, but seeing Yuna deal with the assassins herself, without even noticing they're around, is truly priceless. You can count me hooked.
Comments:
Mamoru wasn't the kind of manga that blew me away right from the start. But when I finished reading it, I realized I'd laughed quite a lot, and had been wearing a smile on my face all the times in between. I'm already looking forward to reading more so I can see Mamoru...well, protect from the shadows - and if I'm very lucky, watch his folks operate in ninja mode as well. (Whee, ninjas, ninjas!) I find that the more I think about this story, the more fondly I remember it. There's an awful lot of fun to be had in this little sleeper.
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