R.O.D: Read or Die
Read or Die

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A very interesting insight on what happens before the OVA anime Read or Die.

I enjoy the anime a lot more then the manga.

But you do get to see where Yomiko met Wendy and Nenene(from ROD the TV) who wasnt in the OVA.

The plot of the manga goes for 4 volumes but really has nothing to do with the story in the anime.

So fans of the OVA will enjoy this manga. Because you get to see the characters differently.

Also would reccomend for older teens. Lesbian kiss in the first volume.

I am a bit surprised that R.O.D. isn’t talked about that much at all. While it is a bit of an older series, I believe it actually holds up. Before I read the manga, I had watched part of the R.O.D OVA as a movie on Tunami so I was very confused when I started up reading it. I wondered if I had picked up a second season rather then the start of the series. Turns out that the OVA do not have anything to do with the manga except for following Yomiko and the basic elements.

Yomiko Readman is our main character and I fell ... in love with her. Her personality is mostly ditsy and sheltered but her good heart shows through everything she does. They drew her to a point where I could feel her love of the books she fights to protect as well as the hope to protect the people who are around her. The only thing I kind of had a problem with was that for most of the book series, she really didn’t seem to grow as a character or have any sort of change. We did see a little of her background and why she works so hard to do what she does but other then that, most of her growth is much later on. Still, I am very very glad that I kept reading as it was worth going through that slow curve.

The only other character they really dove into much was a famous author named Nenene Sumiregawa… Yes, that really was her name. It makes me understand why her pen name was just Paul S. Anyway, she is a interesting supporting character though doesn’t feel like she had any reason being there after the first book. I hear she had a lot more in the spin off sequel Read or Dream but I feel like she was lacking here.

So I come to a little bit of a problem here, the question on if the OVA was better then the Manga seeing as the stories are so different. I liked what I saw of the OVA so that was why I bought the Manga series and yet, I felt let down when I read the first book and found how so different it was. I feel like I like them both for different reasons but consider it two different universes. There are the OVA, and then there is the Manga. It’s so hard to explain without spoiling either one sadly to explain just how much it’s different.

The artwork is very good with a lot of detail. There are times that things are created with thousands of sheets of paper so I am amazed with the creativity that they set up to actually look textured. Most of the characters were very recognizable and stood out well against the other characters except for Nenene who I kept getting confused with another girl in the second part of the series. They just looked so similar that it kept getting me confused especially since they seemed to have the same tone of hair.

Overall, I think R.O.D. is a pretty decent manga series. It holds up on its own without the OVA or TV series. In fact, I would say you should probably read this before the OVA and TV series or just forget about them for a moment as you read this. It will only confuse you more if you don’t.

If I were to summarize Read or Die in one word it would be: 'disappointing'
If I were to do so in one sentence: 'It could have been better'

To summarize its issues separately, we have:
Characters: The characters are probably the biggest issue in this story. Every single one of them was one-dimensional, shallow and had zero motivation for their actions whatsoever. This made them hard to remember in following scenes, as it was very hard to connect with them in any way. They really just seemed to 'show up'.
Also, this meant we had no idea of their 'inner voice', which is one of the most ... essential points in characterisation. Sometimes panels would be drawn and I'd have absolutely no idea who was speaking.

Art:
Read or Die's art style only shined through in its characters. I was especially impressed by this in the first chapter, as Yomiko's face was drawn to be very expressive. However, that's about where it ends.

Asides the characters, not much attention is paid to any other aspects, such as the surroundings. About 60% of the time the characters were drawn against a grey background, sometimes with smoke effects, and most times just blank, which makes its scenes hard to recall as they are drawn in such a forgettable manner.
There was also the issue of poorly drawn fight scenes, which is pretty much an understatement as they were totally unreadable. It was always unbelievably hard to tell what was happening during a fight, what direction things were coming from, and so on.

Lastly, I'm not sure if this counts as an 'art' point, but some times the speech bubbles were drawn without the little pointer to indicate who was speaking. Now of course this isn't something new, a lot of stories do this. But I'm pretty sure those stories include a change in emotion on the face of the character speaking, or at least draws them with their mouth open. (It actually works in these stories because one gets familiar with the character's 'inner voice')
As if this wasn't enough, the speech bubbles were pretty much drawn anywhere on the page/panel. Sometimes the character speaking isn't in the same panel as the speech bubble, or the speech bubble itself was drawn beside someone who, in fact, wasn't speaking, making the situation more confusing. Of course this is entirely normal, but Read or Die's underdeveloped and unrecognizable characters made this unbearable.

Writing: Where do I even start with this?
To be honest, Read or Die's writing isn't exactly bad in any way. At least, if you excuse:

- It's inability to tell us WHY characters were doing what they did, thanks to their bland and corny monologues. This also made things very forgettable. As by the time I put the manga down to go do other things with my life and came back, I couldn't understand what was going on anymore, or remember who certain characters were.

- The endless, painful dialogue:
Now this was BAD. Imagine a standard 5 or 6 paneled page of manga, with at least two speech bubbles in each panel, filled end to end with dialogue. And not just any dialogue, corny, exclamatory dialogue (mostly monologue though) that has zero bearing on the plot or situation at hand. Lines like "the egg shall crumble, and the flower shall be as incense before a tombstone" during a fight. I have no idea what that means. I was almost led to skim my eyes across the page. It was pretty painful to read. (Now add this to the fact that the fight scenes were poorly drawn and the characters were shallow and it was hard to even tell who was talking and I had enough motivation to drop)

- The random introductions of VERY serious themes, only to throw them away a minute later.
In one arc, there's mention of sexual violence towards a teenager, in which the one attempting the r*pe designs an entire wedding hall and somehow even dresses the girl up. This is after the girl wakes up to find herself handcuffed to a bed. And also after she is somehow off the bed but this time with a choker on her neck. And once again, after the man touches her provocatively. I guess it's also worth mentioning that her reaction to the situation is bare of any fear, and more of wonder. Upon having the choker on her neck, she goes wide-eyed and says "what is this thing?" and gets upset that he is ignoring her to ramble crappy monologues.
It should've ended right as her 'saviour' appeared, but instead it was the perfect moment for the 'discuss our motivations while powering up' trope, as this saviour didn't make a move to help the girl because they were 'too tired and injured', and decided to make dialogue with the man instead, until he trapped them, and proceeded to continue with his monologue. Even in such a tight situation, nobody seemed to pay any mind to the fact that this girl was on the verge of being violated.
I was honestly deeply disturbed by this arc in particular. I found it to be poorly handled. Though I guess it's my fault for not seeing the ecchi tag, I couldn't have expected it to be this bad. I'm not even a fan of ecchi in the first place, and I ended up hating it even more.

There's also an indication of a potential love interest between the aforementioned savior and the teenage girl, which is completely stupid, as the savior is an adult and the girl is only in high school.
Another was the beating up of some girls, and I have no idea whether this was fleshed out as it was around that chapter that I finally dropped it.

All in all, Read or Die was a manga that was supposed to be a short, light read, but instead ended up leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. I really shouldn't have this much to write over a 30 chapter manga in the first place. It put me in a reading slump (I think this came from my acquiring the habit of skimming across the page, which I could not stop when I picked up other stories), when in reality, I always see short stories as having an added advantage, as their length means there's less time to find an issue. Sadly it had many.