Mythical Detective LOKI RAGNAROK Vol. #02

By Eduardo M. Chavez     May 17, 2005
Release Date: March 07, 2005



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Kinoshita Sakura
Translated by:Eiko McGregor
Adapted by:

What They Say
Loki, the mythical detective with the face of a young boy and he mind of a crime-solving genius, has met his match - literally! A silver haired clone is looking to make a deal, and with it will come the answers to all things inexplicable in Loki's world, like Spica's sudden lapse into a coma. The boy detective must make sense of this look-alike stranger before he puts his bargaining skills into play, but time is wasting as the mysteries thicken and the questions multiply.

The Review
Packaging:
ADV has does a nice job with the packaging for this title. Presented in a tall B6, in right-to-left format, this GN is a little larger than the original MAG-Garden printing. This re-adjustment in size does not affect the printing much, as many pages have been left in their original B6 aspect. I will say that there are parts were screen tone is a little murky, but that should not distract too much from the content. One thing that I think people will notice immediately is how some pages look cropped. As ADV used the original page size for a good amount of their content, some pages may appear cut off despite having space left around the art. Do not fear that is how it originally was without the framing space.

The cover for this title is great. It is exactly like the Japanese. It is designed to look like a fancy book, with a portrait style picture Loki in his casual wear placed in landscape format above the long title of this series. The portrait is full of yellows and reds, which helps Loki's light colored robes jump out. The picture is on a solid black background, which also adds to the classy look I mentioned earlier. The opposite is solid black (no character art or patterns) with the volume description above another version of the logo. Simple but pretty cool looking.

Inside ADV did not include color pages, which appears to be their policy for titles that began after Summer 2004. Fortunately, they did include an ato-gaki and a message from Kinoshita-sensei. They also included ads for Chrono Crusade and Cromartie High School.

Artwork:
Kinoshita's character designs are very cute, but are pretty confusing as well. Lines are thin but strong. On taller characters they really make some nice bodylines for both male and female characters. On shorter characters they look a little off because characters look off scale. Actually, in general Kinoshita is very inconsistent with her proportions. There are times when characters look really tall, other characters look very tiny and suddenly others are small enough to sit on top of a short character's head. At times I could not tell if characters were super-deformed or not and the writing did not really help me in those situations. Fortunately, costumes are very nice often full of nice inking and interesting variety - school uniforms, maid outfits, casual wear, and formal wear.

Backgrounds can look really nice. As this is a shonen title, there are plenty of occasions where backgrounds are not drawn in, but when they are present they often exhibit great detailing with a focus on European style architecture. The layout is very good. There is a lot of variety in panel size, character positioning, point of view and manpu use. Kinoshita really knows when to be passive and active with her layout and it really helps keep an up pace tone to this cute series.

Text/SFX:
The translation sounds pretty good. This volume is clear of typos, which is an improvement over volume one. And some of the confusing dialogue issues were explained in more detail in the side notes of this volume - i.e. Narugami/Narukami and the identities of Freya.

SFX are translated with subs. After doing this for a year, ADV is becoming pretty good at this. There are still occasions where subs are too large for the panels they are in, but the majority of these situations they do not compromise art much while following a close feel to the original SFX.

Contents: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Mythical Detective Loki has always been able to solve the toughest riddles. Being a prankster himself, he knows the criminal mind and does not mind. He has experienced the ins and outs first hand, so very little gets past him. That does not mean that people do not try to out smart Loki, but very few dare to antagonize him openly.

Well, someone is trying and this person has done much more than upset Loki. This villain has attacked Loki's family in an effort to intimidate the detective. And while Loki cannot tell yet if this was done purposely, this scheme has wrapped up the entire town, accidentally involving a large number of people who should not have even been aware of this conflict between Loki and his new rival.

Who is this person causing all this trouble? What is his connection to Loki? Why is he targeting Loki and his family? Whoever it is they must be powerful for who would dare mess with the gods?

This person is very close to Loki; anyone would consider him family at the very least. He knows all of Loki's tricks, all of his wit and almost everything else about the Mythical Detective. He is so similar to Loki, people would have a hard time telling them apart. If they were to meet each other it would be like looking at a reflection in a mirror.

Comments
Finally, a case to solve and it could not have come at a better time. As a reader, I was getting a little frustrated at all of the pet searches and the random pointless "romance" building chapters, I needed some detective work of mythical proportions. Kinoshita finally follows through. Loki has met his match and it comes from the least likely source. The only way something this crazy could work is by connecting the human world we live in, with whatever legend Kinoshita can dig up. Some of it works and then there is what appears to be some rambling, but when put together she appears to be threading together something intriguing. The mix of Norse mythology, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Japanese urban legend is a bit of a mish-mash, but it is much more entertaining than anything else this series has had to offer, so that is a plus. This series has always walked along a thin line between full-blown fantasy and maho-shonen comedy, and this is a reasonable extension of that.

Not having much experience with Norse legend, I am having a little trouble making out the roles here. Honestly, even with this arch being set up with new characters, there is still plenty of background that would have been helpful missing. This really is not Kinoshita's fault; unfortunately ADV is mainly to blame. As this is the continuation of an existing series eleven volumes worth of history is missing and nothing apart from the release of those GNs (or maybe an extensive fan book of the series) will be able to fill in the gaps.

Knowing that, I cannot recommend this series right now. That was a very difficult decision for me, because I can see some improvement. However, I take this as a call to ADV or the other publishers out there to take a chance with the first series. This series really needs it and readers of Loki deserve a chance to get to experience the story in its entirety.