Review: READ OR DREAM (R.O.D.)

 I've never been shy about my fondness for Read Or Die.  Hell, for years my choice of online avatar was usually some form of Yomiko Readman.  But my fondness for this franchise only goes so far...

READ OR DREAM (R.O.D.), written by Hideyuki Kurata with art by Ran Ayanaga.  First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

The Paper Sisters Detective Agency is made up of three members.  There's Michelle, the eldest member, who is the most romantic, optimistic, and obsessive of the lot.  There's Maggie, the quiet, dreamy, androgynous one in the middle.  Then there's Anita, the youngest, a spunky tomboy who actually doesn't like to read.  While they are not related by blood, they are all united by two things: the ability to control paper and their commitment towards solving any and all book-related mysteries, even if they also happen to involve estranged family members, sick kids, and the occasional alien.

STORY:

Read or Die, no matter whether you're talking about the manga or the OVA, is a silly and enjoyable action romp, one that I enjoyed far more than I expected.  Read or Dream is still very silly, but it's nowhere near as action-packed, consistent, or fun.

I honestly wonder why Kurata even bothered to tie this into the larger Read or Die universe.  Instead of a singular action storyline, it's an episodic slice-of-life story.  There's very little action, and while most of the girls love books very much none of them really show off their paper-wielding powers.  Maybe I would find it more tolerable if the slice-of-life stuff was fascinating in its own right, but it's simply not.  At best it's trite, and at worst it's outright pointless.  The most substantial it ever gets is the time that Maggie bonds with a sick blind girl, and even then that seems to be mostly there for the sake of yuribait.  It's hard to even get attached to any of these erstwhile Paper Sisters because the only thing they each have going for them is their one or two respective quirks, which is all they get for personality.  Combined with the nothingburger stories, the whole book feels like an exercise in pointlessness.

ART:

Read Or Dream's art suffers just as badly in comparison to its predecessor as its story.  Ayanaga's character designs are fine enough, but they (and everything else) are flatly drawn.  There's no visual detail or energy to be found in these pages and panels, which only adds to the feeling of pointlessness.

RATING:

Read or Dream couldn't be any more different from Read or Die in all the worst ways possible.  It has no personality to latch onto, no interesting narrative to move it forward, and frankly no reason to exist.  Part of me wonders if this was Kurata's attempt to tap into the 'cute girls doing cute things' market that was all the rage in the mid 2000s.

Quite frankly, he shouldn't have bothered.

This series was published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  All 4 were released and are currently out of print.