Kenja wa Nemuru: Shinjou Mimei no Houseki Jikenbo
A Wise Man Sleeps

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Story (8): I really liked the plot for this story, although I was rather skeptical at first. It seems like a very familiar scene as Miharu (our young and innocent protagonist) is left with an enormous debt by her dirt-bag father and has no way to pay it back. From there, however, things were surprisingly refreshing. Miharu meets Rintaro, who appears to be a rather spineless and absent-minded young man, and he saves her from the debt. The rest of the story is filled with the two of them solving mysteries surrounding jewels, and often results in Miharu learning more about herself. Oh, I almost ... forgot! I particularly enjoyed the gruesome depictions of spirits and such that were put in. It's not every day that you get to read shoujo with horror in it!

Art (9): I actually really like older looking drawing styles and A Wise Man Sleeps is no exception. Takeuchi did a beautiful job of drawing the main characters and really giving them life. Miharu's expressions widely varied and were fairly easy to differentiate (unlike some mangas where the character's face never changes from three defaults >.

A stones, they have strong spiritual powers that can make you feel good or bad depending on what you need… and in this case, can also curse you to no end. Being a Wiccan (that’s my religion, if you don’t like it, then I don’t care) I use stones to gather powers and to heal people who need it. This manga has something of a similar nature although they go into the alchemist part of the deal and amplify it a million times over.

We start out with a rather interesting young girl who has lost all parental guidance in her life, mother died and father ... has run off. This seems like the most typical shoujo style in that this little high school girl has to do everything on her own, then meets a handsome guy who saves her and they run off into the night. It’s typical and basically runs the same format as all the other manga and animes like this. Then we add the story by chapter files to it where they find someone in trouble and help them. Again, basic storyline for these types of manga. Through all this review, your not going to find much that makes the story stand out from any other but what makes this pretty good is that I don’t fully get bored of it. The same with Zodiac P.I., I enjoy these types of stories where the girl is a smartass teen who tries to stand up for what she believes in and ends up in these strange situations or has some strange power given to them.

Miharu (Again, very standard name for main character girl) gets a rather interesting power when she swallows a stone called the ‘wise man stone’ when she thought that it was going to be taken from her. The wise man stone is known to give people eternal life, turn metal into gold, cure people – pretty much this is the philosopher’s stone in a nut shell. Not exactly sure why they had to try and give it such a pretty little name as the wise man stone but they did. Of course, this stone was hunted by Rintaro Akechi who is part of a secret organization that was looking for the stone. Again, this feels pretty standard except for the fact he is normally a weak little pansy boy who apologizes way too much instead of a strong bad boy. He only turns into a strong bad boy when he uses his own wise man stone.

The sad part about the manga is that it finished up without even having an ending. The last chapter ‘Emerald’ has no real ending to it and just hangs there. It makes me sad that the story isn’t able to be completed.

The artwork is pretty much like every other Shoujo out there, beautiful fine details mixed with rather funny little panels where a character is getting bonked on the head or something. Nothing much to say there.

I would give the manga high praise if it didn’t leave with such a sudden stop at the end. With no ending in sight, it just loses some of the love I had for its story. If you don’t want to suddenly be asking where the next book is, then this really isn’t the one for you. On the other hand, if you don’t care about a no ending and enjoy the small pieces to the story, then go for it.