Merry Month of Manga: MOURYOU KIDEN: LEGEND OF THE NYMPH

Once again I found myself staring down another Tamayo Akiyama manga.  Could it possibly fare better than the likes of Zyword and Hyper Rune?

Spoilers: No, it doesn't.

MOURYOU KIDEN: LEGEND OF THE NYMPH (Moryou Kiden), by Tamayo Akiyama.  First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

In a distant realm, the sun goddess Mikage watches over her sister Reiki, goddess of darkness.  Long ago Mikage imprisoned Reiki to keep her from destroying the world and now Reiki wants nothing but revenge.  She sends forth her daughter Ayaka to destroy Mikage's stronghold, but Ayaka is distracted when she meets the handsome demon king Kai, who is also one of Mikage's sons.  The two are immediately smitten, but their whirlwind romance is torn apart when they learn of one another's true natures and Kai sacrifices himself to protect Ayaka.  Now Ayaka only years to bring Kai back, even if that means defying her mother, teaming up with some of Kai's siblings, and venturing into Hades itself to bring him back.

STORY:

I hope you all appreciate the plot summary up there because it took me far too long to sort out the plot of this damn book.  Akiyama wastes absolutely no time throwing all sorts of lore and proper names at the reader and it swiftly becomes overwhelming.  The breakneck pacing leaves little time for the reader to absorb and reckon with all the plot twists and information, much less time for things 'establishing character' or 'building up a romance'.

It didn't have to be this way, though.  The base of the story is simple: it's a star-crossed romance.  It's basically Romeo and Juliet meets the myth of Orpheus.  If Akiyama could just slow down for a moment, stop frontloading all the backstory, and focus on her heroine, then maybe she could figure that out for herself and write a manga that didn't suck.

ART:

This is the earliest of the Akiyama manga Tokyopop put out, and it's arguably the most derivative of them all.  It's not just enough that she's aping CLAMP's art style, she's straight-up ripping off RG Veda here (with maybe a little bit of X).  Beyond that, this has the same problem as her other manga.  Even if her character designs are derivative, they could potentially be elegant.  It's too bad that she drowns them in swirling fabric, hair, magic, monsters, fog, and speech bubbles.  It's pure visual chaos, which only makes the story that much more confusing.  On top of everything, Tokyopop decided to make some of the villains "speak" in ridiculously Gothic fonts which not only clash with everything else but are also hard as hell to read.

RATING:

Mouryou Kiden gives Tamayo Akiyama a hat-trick of failure.  It's just as gaudy, confusing, rushed, and derivative as all of her work, and like the others is completely unessential to read.

This series is published by Viz, and previously by Tokyopop.  This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available.  All 3 were published; the physical volumes are out of print, but the series is available