Otakuism

For awhile now I’ve had a vested interest in the state of light novels in english. Since so many new anime are based on this literary form, I’ve been eager to test it out. Scrapped Princess is part of Tokyopop’s POP Fiction line they started in October, and is the third official Light Novel I’ve read in english, after Boogiepop and Vampire Hunter D. I’ve actually had the book since a couple weeks after it came out, but it’s surprisingly hard to read a light novel when your engrossed in the tales of Dan Simmons, but that’s another story entirely, so just accept this late review.

Most people you’ve been into anime for a couple years have probably seen Scrapped Princess. However I’ve never seen it, so I get to approach this story on a clean slate. Scrapped Princess tells the story of Pacifica Casull, the princess from the title. When she was born it was prophecized she would destroy the world, and was to be killed. But that didn’t happen, and she was rescued by a couple, one a master swordsman, the other a master sorceress. And so Pacifica got to live in peace for fourteen years, that is until the beginning of our story. It begins with the kingdom in power discovering she is still alive and sending assassins after her. With the assassins having already killed her adoptive father, it is up to her brother and sister, the sarcastic swordmaster Shannon and clutzy sorceress Raquel, to protect her until her sixteenth birthday.

Not exactly the freshest story ever told, but still a good one. The characters really make it great to me. The constant bickering between the tsundere Pacifica and apathetic Shannon provide the comic relief, with the ditzy Raquel providing the cutest/funniest moments. But the story isn’t all fun and games. This is a serious fantasy novel with a ton of sword and sorcery. The action scenes are plentiful and fast, short enough to be suspenseful but not drawn out. Some can be confusing at times, but they serve their purpose well. The element of sorcery is explained naturally through dialogue and it isn’t hard to pick up it’s technicalities. It’s not the complex rules of the Nasuverse, that’s for sure. While I can’t compare the translation to the japanese, the english works well and flows naturally, a far cry from the often jarring narrations from tokyopop’s manga. The only odd intance is a joke towards the end about Pacifica and Shannon’s supposed intimate relationship, and a character saying it’s ” Hot “. Please, keep your slang out of my sword and sorcery.

The few illustrations in the book are drawn beautifully by Yukinobu Azumi aka. Mogudan of those Rei Ayanami doujins fame. Being a hentai artist, all the women are incredibly sexy (even fourteen year old Pacifica) and the men oddly muscular. I love his artwork anyways, so I don’t mind at all and wish there were even more illustrations. The binding of the book is solid, and the paper thick with no bleed through from the images. If only tokyopop could release their manga in such a quality binding. However, this is where my one complaint comes in. They completely replaced the goddamn cover, not with another Scrapped Princess image, but a shoddy crown and blood that any first year graphic design student could fucking make. Compare the Japanese vol.1 cover below to the tokyopop cover above.

The difference is jarring, isn’t it? When I emailed Tokyopop on the horrendous change, all I got back was some crap about making the book appeal to non-anime/manga fans. Ok, that may be nice and all, but won’t work when the book is still stocked in the fucking manga section! You already have a core audience, why do you need to piss them off?! And Tokyopop is doing this for all their light novels. I shudder at what will happen to the stunningly beautiful images by THORE on the Trinity Blood books. Sorry for being so emotional, but the one thing I can’t stand is the editing of perfectly good images. I’m a firm believer of if it existed in the Japanese version, it had damn well better be in the English one. Sadly, this is a little too difficult for some companies to understand.

So in short, Scrapped Princess is a good fantasy story with great characters, and should be read by both the anime and non-anime fans alike, or those who are craving some light reading after that 900 page science fiction novel you just finished. Just ignore the cover, or even better, complain to Tokyopop about how terrible it is. I’m going to get them to listen one of these day’s.