Otakuism

Story:

The sibling trio of Shannon, Raquel, and Pacifica continue their journey of being on the run from the kingdom in order to protect Pacifica, the Scrapped Princess who will destroy the world. While trying to get to the outer territories of the kingdom, the group meets the Inquisitor Berkens, a rather odd priest with massive muscles. He’s on the search for a heretic group in the area said to be lead by the Scrapped Princess. Eventually the group ends up trapped on the island where the heretic group, Blasphemer’s Garden, has its hideout. Lead by the man in the iron mask, Reynard, and his false Scrapped Princess figure head, Elfitine, the group plans to “condemn” the Mauser Church for its persecution. And, wouldn’t you just know it, but that “condemning” involves killing a lot of people?

Impressions:

I wish I could say SP decided to move beyond its generic fantasy trappings into something greater, but it hasn’t. Instead we get another standalone adventure about heretics, which isn’t too bad since they are a new part of the SP world we haven’t seen. Fortunately, volume 3 proves more interesting than volume 2. It’s a concise story free of any of the random sidequests from the previous volume, like Shannon in drag, instead moving at a brisk and steady pace throughout. The new characters introduced are mostly a mixed bag: Berkens is great as the amoral yet lovable priest, and Reynard is interesting as the anti-hero/villian, providing the main twist of the book that even I didn’t see. Elfitine, the other Scrapped Princess, isn’t so great, mostly wallowing in her own self-pity throughout the whole book until Pacifica cheers her up. This seems to be a running theme now, starting with emo Winia and now emo Elfitine. She is hot, though. The plot of volume 3 doesn’t really add much to the overall SP plot, if there is one, but does a good job of being entertaining, if at least for a little while.

One complaint I have for the story is the overexplanation of magic. While the mechanics of magic have been shown to be complicated in the previous book, it’s on a whole different level here. Ichiro Sakaki seems to thrill in describing the inner workings of one big spell after another. Too bad they aren’t that interesting and just come out confusing, messing up the flow of that particular sequence. And when your magic has such names as “Fenrir” and “Thor,” I don’t want to know how they work. On the publishing quality, everything is the same from the previous books. Same gaudy and inappropiate cover (I mean, a genie doesn’t even show up in the book!), pages with way too much white space, and Yukinobu Azumi’s beautiful, in more ways than one, drawings. This volume is also noticeably thicker than the previous ones, which seems to bode well for the series.

Volume 3 is mostly an improvement over the previous volumes in the series. The developed plot of Shannon, Raquel, and Pacifica falling into trouble and solving it is used to better effect here, providing a more engaging, if still generic story. Textbook fantasy at its best you could say.