Ouke no Monshou

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

This manga is for people who want a very beautiful love story. The story portrays a girl named Carol who goes back and forth form present and past and an Egyptian king falls in love with her. This story has romance, mystery, history, jealousy, tragedy and an element of surprise too. I would highly recommend it because the story is very beautiful and it tells how two lovers pass through a lot of obstacles. Although the art might be a let down but once you really read it, you'll get hooked like em and will definitely want more. Once I read the manga, I kept ... on wanting more and more of it and I read about 60 chapters in a day.

So this daughter of a billionaire named Carol is into archeology and her family stumbles on the tomb of a young pharaoh that happened to have a sister named Isis who knows magic well enough to traverse time and guard (poorly mind you) the body of her dead brother in the 21st Century. This sister kidnaps Carol to carry out what everyone is calling the mummy's curse and takes her back to a time when Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower where Carol becomes the love interest to Pharaoh Memphis and many other world leaders of the time which all fight over either her ... or Memphis. Where do I begin? The story is trying to portray a love transcending time over a millennia and the many things getting in it's way from BOTH eras while also giving us a history/ancient politics lesson. It almost fails in in both. For the historical portion, NOTHING is accurate! I study Hittite, Babylonian, Sumerian, and Egyptian history for fun and also because I'm considering writing my own novel. Pharaoh Memphis doesn't exist (in fact they would have been better making him King Tut given the age), Prince Izumi (or whatever his name is; the translation I read kept changing with translators), and the events happening in Hattusa are either askew or didn't happen. And no, this isn't because she's a person in the past screwing up history because the writer actually TRIES to place real live events in here. The problem is that most of these events didn't even happen in the SAME CENTURY! For example, the fire of the Hittitie empire wiped out Hattusus, NOT some no name city and that was in a time when Egypt was ONE nation, not split into Upper and Lower. The other part that's supposed to draw you in is the love story and it's BOGUS! He's abusive and abrasive EVERY chance he's finally got her alone with him, even breaking her arm at one point and she for some reason SHE can't explain, is head-over-heals. Any other time, she needs rescuing and he's the knight-in-shining-armor despite knowing she's going back to a situation worse that the one Rhianna and Eminem were trying to portray in "Love the Way You Lie". The whole of the story circles around her constantly getting kidnapped and him going to save her and him getting in trouble and her going to save him and THAT'S IT! Damsel in Distress for the moment, make a historical story out of it.

The characters are so one dimensional it's infuriating. Oh the author TRIES to make them dynamic and interesting but it falls harder than a newborn giraffe. She is smart and understands how to create clean filtered water and build empires with the possession of weapons (while the Egyptian empire NEVER thought of it) and escape dungeons that how even the most desperate of men and REVERSE THE FRIGGING FLOW OF A HUGE RIVER TO BRING DOWN THE WALLS OF A CITY MADE OF DRIED MUD!!!.....but can't manage to evade one man trying to kidnap her? LAZY WRITING!!!!! And she also can't figure out that maybe a physically abusive tyrat isn't someone you should just readily resign to marry. Then there's the Pharaoh: Memphis is devoting and caring and protective and understanding....when he's not forcing you to starve and rot in a dark dirty dungeon simple because you don't want to kiss him. Oh yeah! He does that! Then regrets it like a child regrets getting caught by his parents: he's not sorry, he's sorry it got so big and he got busted. Granted he's pharaoh and no one would think to punish him (further spoiling him) but he's not making much effort to LEARN from his mistake. He breaks her arm and feels bad but he still abuses her WHILE her arm is healing. He's a king but he acts like a spoiled brat rather than a tyrant, he doesn't think to steal weaponry and needs a woman to point that out to him and doesn't consider SELLING his newly conquered wealth to build an armory, he's as gullible as a TODDLER, yet he's often out-of-nowhere portrayed as a worthy military leader! The other characters exist either to separate the lovers and/or try to conquer/steal their hearts and/or country. On top of that, EVERYTHING that happens seems to require a massive over-reaction. "I dropped a plate", "I found a sharp object", "I see my beloved or his enemy" *SUPER MEGA ULTRA CHOCOLATEY-COATED SPECIAL DESU-DESU MOE-MODE GASP!!!!! every moment is played up like a climax so you can't bask in the quiet moments or appreciate any subtlety.

On the other hand, the art starts our weak but then most manga do that because the artist is still in the process of perfecting a unique artstyle or look for a character. When that art style is established, you see something resembling the walls of a pyramid. Profile bodies, the way Egyptian drawings depict hands and object and poses, all of it resembling ancient Egyptian calligraphy. There are the frontal and rear and diagonal shots but when you see a side shot, the whole room turns into an ancient tablet, it's stunning. The character designs are unique and you can easily tell characters apart even if you forget their name. The Babylonian king LOOKS like he's from Babylon and if you aren't familiar with ancient dress code, it does a decent job of separating each look by country, class, and gender. You can tell the difference between a slave and a really poor commoner without seeing chains and whips. If not, their mannerisms are portrayed well enough to separated them. But then there's the over reactions to everything. It gets old when all the heroine knows how to do is gasp in fear and anxiety when she could just look and react (they actually have multiple panels and sometimes pages of *SUPER MEGA ULTRA CHOCOLATEY-COATED SPECIAL DESU-DESU MOE-MODE GASP!!! for one character).

So as you can see, I didn't finish this. There's two reasons for that: 1) I've been reading it online and I could only find it in English up to Chapter 62 [the chapters between 62 and probably 81 that I could find were in Vietnamese and I know how to navigate my way around multiple mange and non-manga site to find what I'm looking for] and 2) I realized that the only thing I was enjoying was the many ways this girl found an escape, how resourceful she was, battle strategies, and ancient politics. The love story didn't ignite me as ALL it had going was "save the dumbass that just portrayed himself/herself as some that can take care of themselves, and the characters were infuriatingly stupid from gullibility to falling in love with someone KNOWN to be violent to BASIC COMMON SENSE AND SURVIVAL SKILLS. I'd love to learn more about battle strategies and historical dilemmas and ideals but I just can stomach ANYMORE stupid characters and weak plot line and blatantly inaccurate historical references. It's fine for a while for those who have read "Red River" (or "Anatolia Tales" for some) and want to see the Orient in a different light or from a different point of view but I'd recommend reading this BEFORE "Red River" as it fails miserably in matching up and ANY of the above categories. Id rather have read this then moved up to something better than to see writing at it's best then see what happens when the writer doesn't care about being accurate or giving their characters AND story depth. My score total was what I averaged from the categories and "Mediocre" fits my opinion of this manga perfectly.