Merry Month of Manga: RADIANT

Well, since I talked about Beyond the Clouds I might as well cover the other recent fantasy manga with French origins.

RADIANT, by Tony Valente.  First published in 2013 and first published in North America in 2018.

PLOT:

In the land of Pompo Hills, there are ordinary people and there are the Infected.  These people are wizards filled with a magical force called Fantasia that produces strange side-effects but allows them to fight deadly magical monsters called Nemeses.  Seth is a wizard in training who is ready and eager to fight a Nemesis, and during his first fight with one discovers that he has a special power: he can wield fantasia without the use of the usual magical gauntlets.  This skill makes him powerful, but it also makes him desirable to both other wizards and to the Inquisitors who would oppress them.

STORY:

If I didn't already know that Tony Valente was a Frenchman working out of Canada, I would have sworn upon my life that Radiant was just another shonen manga.  Storywise, it's indistinguishable from anything that could be coming out of Weekly Shonen Jump or Weekly Shonen Magazine...which is also its biggest weakness.

From cover to cover, Radiant is packed with every shonen manga cliche you could think of.  You've got the lunkheaded protagonist with a heart of gold and a special power.  You have the grouchy mentor who reluctantly loves their charge.  You have a bunch of snooty, power/money-hungry goons and a shadowy organization who wants to oppress them all.  You have an overly complicated power system.  You have childish morals about prejudice, and of course you have extended fights that mostly involve the protagonist punching things.  Younger readers will likely find it all very fun and thrilling as it's all delivered in a very earnest and energetic way, but older readers who are more familiar with shonen manga will likely find this all very predictable.

ART:

Valente's art clearly takes a lot of cues from Eiichiro Oda and Hiro Mashima.  The backgrounds are closer to One Piece in that they are heavily detailed and delightfully whimsical and run-down, while the characters take more of a cue from Fairy Tail.  This is most obvious with Seth himself, who is basically Natsu with a more casual style and a couple of tiny horns.  I will say that aside from Seth, Valente's character designs are very fun and the most original part of this series.  I particularly like the design for Melie, a young wizard that Seth meets along the way.  She's got a cute, perky design that's topped off with an absolutely ridiculous mop of giant sausage curls, and it's absolutely adorable.

RATING:

Radiant may not have a lot of original ideas, but you can't say that Valente isn't having fun making it.  It's an obvious recommendation for shonen manga fans, particularly younger ones, so long as they don't get too hung up on it not being Japanese.

This series is published by Viz.  This series is ongoing in France with 14 volumes available.  13 volumes have been released and are currently in print.