Merry Month of Shojo: BEAST MASTER

Of course, there's plenty of middle-of-the-road fare to be had.  The most interesting thing about this one has nothing to do with the plot, but with who created it.

BEAST MASTER (Bisuto Masuta), by Kyousuke Motomi.  First published in 2006 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

Yuiko loves animals, but they definitely do not love her back.  The only creature she can seem to charm is the new kid in class, Leo.  He's a literal wild child whose fierce eyes and strange behavior scare away most of their classmates, but Yuiko is drawn to his ability to charm any animal he encounters.  In turn, she's the only one who can calm Leo's savage fury if he sees blood.  As Yuiko explores just what made Leo this way, she finds herself falling harder and harder for him.

STORY:

So once again, we find ourselves looking at a Beauty and the Beast-style story where a gentle girl tames the savage beast of manhood.  This is something that normally annoys me, but to my great surprise it turned out to be fluffy and goofy instead of exploitative and annoying.  It's certainly not what I would have expected from the creator of Dengeki Daisy.

That's not to say that it's particularly good.  Yuiko is a rather bland heroine, defined only by her kindness and her bad luck with animals.  Meanwhile, Leo has only two moods: happy puppy-dog and savage beast.  Thankfully we spend far more time in puppy-dog mode, where Leo does things like impressing a gang into becoming his pack or just getting excited that soda pop goes fizz-fizz.

Even when things are meant to be more serious, it's a very ridiculous sort of serious.  Motomi goes to increasingly ludicrous lengths to put Yuiko in danger, all so Leo can rescue her.  It's not terribly original or deep as far as drama goes, but a little goofy charm goes a long way towards making it palatable.

ART:

Motomi's art is pretty generic here.  It's all dark gooey eyes, matchstick limbs, and messy mops of hair.  She does a lot better with the more dramatic bits.  Leo's scary faces have a sort of Higurashi-esque craziness to them and they were some of the very few moments that stuck with me while reading.  At least the animals are well drawn?

PRESENTATION:

This volume also includes Motomi's debut story.  It's about a girl who wants to be a pilot but keeps getting pushed into medicine, who in turns receives a degree of (rather pushy) encouragement from a cute guy in her class.  The art here is even less polished and more pointy, to the point where the boy's hair looks like a hedgehog.

RATING:


It's that little bit of goofy sweetness that manages to push Beast Master over the edge into a yellow-light rating, but unless you're deeply curious about Motomi's work I can't imagine seeking this one out either.

This series is published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 2 volumes available.  Both volumes have been released and are currently out of print.