C-blossom: Case 729

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Let’s play Bamboozled!

Question: Your father goes to prison for embezzlement. Do you;

Use the money to take all your friends on vacation for old times sake therefore benefiting from this chance by falling in love?
or
Transfer yourself to an all girl school and learn that the same people that framed your father are out to capture you therefore you’re running for your life?

Of course it’s the latter because this isn’t a romance. Actually my very poor effort at making it sound lighthearted is because this manga is a serious one. This one has secret agents, rats (not the nasty hairy rodents that carry diseases, the ... human ones that carry lies and deceit), and guns.


“It’s exactly as planned.”
Really? Then why are there many pages correcting your mistake?

C-Blossom starts of with a dark and gloomy introduction. Through a few flashes of her past we immediately learn about Kana Matsumiya and what got her to that point in her life. It’s easy to understand why she became so serious and unfriendly. Unfortunately we only get a small glance into that personality for as soon as a new teacher appears in her school she opens up. Before you know it she is telling him her life’s story. There’s nothing wrong with it either she just needed someone to confide in, he just happened to be the one she chose.
Her character leaves something to be desired and stumbles through her role. It’s technically not her fault since she has no idea what’s going on around her. Out of nowhere she finds that someone hired an assassin to kidnap her to use her as leverage in order to keep her father from speaking out in court. Now the life she wanted to disappear from is being taken away from her. She must choose, to fight or not to fight?

Kana was kind of boring and even though her circumstances gave us an opportunity to like her, it was hard for me to really feel for her. Maybe it was because it was fast paced and had more to do with revealing the secret double agent and she was always running and being saved. She was pretty useless. Not one punch or kick, she was purely a damsel in distress.

If anything the real prize was the unfolding of the hatred between the two main guys, Touya and Kisaragi, and their issues. The story might revolve and had started of with Kana but somehow it didn’t lack the development in getting to know Touya and Kisaragi. Which honestly are the focal point of this manga . The assassin and the one assigned to guard her, both trained together to protect but one took himself out of that race. That line also makes for great movie narration.
The Embassy and it's associates including the embezzlement group was pictured rather believable and nothing super extravagant was done.

It’s very unoriginal if you’re comparing to action movies. The bad guys look like bad guys, the good guys look like good guys. It’s mostly predictable and you can see what’s going to happen, either that or I have developed psychic abilities. Seeing as I haven’t won the lotto, I’d say that’s a negative.

The art is average, seems to be a lot of that lately. There’s a lot of actions scenes and they make sense, by making sense I mean I easily see when the gun is being shot. It’s very clean and the characters are all different giving them a certain appeal to them. It's appealing but nothing magical.

Overall, it’s an ok read and a fast one, but not one I’ll read over again. The story is good, characters are ok, some details aren’t always there or they seem fuzzy in the interpretation. Some don’t even get explanations.

“Come with me if you want to live.”
Oh jeez, yeah ok.

You’ve been Bamboozled!

I really need to stop watching Friends marathons...

Kana's life was fine--Kana had friends and a good relationship with her parents. But that all changed when her father was accused of embezzling funds from his government job. Abandoned by her friends, betrayed by her parents, she moves to a new school. Making friends with the new art teacher might get her involved in more than she was expecting...
Filled with action, suspense, revenge, intrigue, and drama, things get exciting quickly.

The story was great. It was sort of like a spy story. Things kept yo-yoing back between slow-paced drama, and action and gunfights. There was action, but little gore ... or gratuitous violence.

The main characters were good. Kana was smart and sympathetic, and could be brave when push came to shove. I don't like heroines who are spineless, or are kick-a** and unrealistic.

The artwork was beautiful. Sort of the "thick, bold, glassy, and smooth" style you can see in other works by Shimotsuki (and also in the mangas by naked ape).

The manga is fairly short at 2 volumes (4 chapters--each chapter is over 100 pages). There was so much more about the characters I wanted to know! I want to know more about Kou! But, being a good manga, it keeps you wanting more tidbits than it can possibly give!

The plot of this manga has already been explained in the summary and by other reviewers, so I see no point in doing it again. I would like to point out some specific things though.

The story is predictable, and the character were stereotyped (especially the male characters). It reminds the typical Hollywood action movie.

One of its greatest flaw is probably the lack of character development. The conflict between the two agents isn´t explained in a satisfactory way... It is somehow explained, but it is by no means enough. However, there is something even more disturbing: the fact that Ko Kisaragi killed his father. How ... is it that we never get to know what happened between Kisaragi and his father? This event obviously has something to do with his choice of life and his present personality. Despite that, the event is just mentioned. As a matter of fact, we never really get to know Kisaragi at all.

Probably there wasn´t time enough for a deeper development of the characters, as the manga is so short. This may also be the cause for certain events to be rushed or look forced, especially in the final chapter... which got a little confusing at times.

The art was ok. Many explosions, shootings, fights. And the story was, despite what I said before, entertaining... but, don´t expect anything out of the ordinary.