Merry Month of (Shojo) Manga: QUEEN OF RAGTONIA

One of the joys of doing these month-long marathons is digging deep into my collection of books to review and finding some hidden treasures - oddball series from obscure (and often long-gone) publishers that never got a fair chance to shine.

QUEEN OF RAGTONIA (Ragutonia), by Chika Shiomi.  First published in 2006 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

The kingdom of Pharsia is under attack from a necromancer who is sucking life force from its people and turning them into demons.  It seems that no one can stop him, but two people are determined to try.  One of them is Falsa, the last surviving member of the royal family.  Despite the necromancer stealing the sight from one eye and her ability to use her legs, she's determined to find a legendary sword, and save both the kingdom and the poor souls trapped by these demons.  The other is Cardus, a gentle giant from a small village who lost one of his own eyes to the demons.  While he's strong enough to both wield the sword and carry Falsa, he's also sympathetic enough to show kindness to the same demon who took half his sight.

STORY:

There's nothing I love more than a good shojo adventure series, be it old-school favorites like Basara or more current incarnations like Yona of the Dawn.  It's little wonder then that I fell in love with Queen of Ragtonia right away.  While the fantasy setting is not necessarily all that original, what makes it truly shine is the little tweaks Shiomi makes to the standard tropes and types.  There's a bit of reversal with the dynamic between Falsa and Cardus, with Falsa being the strong, commanding leader while Cardus is the kinder, gentler, and more compassionate of the two.  Compassion is a major theme here, as the both of them get moments to demonstrate that their quest is not just a matter of slaying demons, but showing them kindness in both life and death, allowing their innate humanity to shine through.

That being said, if there's one off note here, it's in Falsa's backstory.  Falsa turns out to be possessed by the spirit of an unknown male warrior, and the implication that it's his personality that has wrought such a radical and un-feminine change in her own.  Aside from the obvious sexism of such an idea, it undercuts the emotional development she demonstrates all on her own in that same backstory.  Falsa feels intense guilt over the deaths of her family and her own cowardice, but she finds the strength within herself to overcome that and use this second chance at life to make things right.  Turning what should be a powerful moment into a spiritual personality rewrite undercuts Falsa's personal growth as a character, and I kind of wish it had been cut entirely.

After all, it's not like this is the first time Shiomi has told this story.  As we learn in the author's notes, this is actually a remake of an original doujin she made years before her professional debut.  I can see why, as this is a strong and timeless premise and she doesn't waste time by padding things out with demon-of-the-week stories.  If not for that one misstep, this volume would be virtually perfect.

ART:

Shiomi's art has also been updated from the 1990s (as we see in those same author's notes), and it's extremely well done.  Her characters are long, lanky, and pretty with their squared-, but her linework and designs are clean, simple, but still fantastical.  Her panels are fairly straightforward in style, which makes the rare moment of elegant shojo imagery all the more striking.  Even the setting is nicely rendered, relying more on the natural beauty of dense forests and mountain ranges than anything else.

PRESENTATION:

In addition to the backstory for this particular story, she also includes a very humorous and relatable omake about trying to train her very dumb, eager, and hungry golden retriever.  It goes about as well as you would expect.

RATING:


It's positively criminal that this was the only volume of Queen of Ragtonia that Aurora was able to release before their own untimely end.  If this first volume is any indication, it would have been an absolute gem of a series, one able to stand strong and proud alongside the classics I mentioned before.  This absolutely deserves to be rescued from the trash heap of the 2000s manga boom.

This series was published by Aurora Press.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  1 volumes was published and is currently out of print.