"Light Inheritor" Review
Apr. 20th, 2012 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelOK. So, I finally bothered to read Fuyuki Nea's Light Inheritor FE4 manga, which covers the exploits of the 2nd Gen. I'd been avoiding it because I heard it contained heavy Celice/Leaf subtext with a jealous!Nanna angle, which sounded about as appealing as cleaning the basement.
This particular rumor is not true (though Celice does get upset when he catches Leaf and Nanna holding hands). That said, it's romance-driven in a way that actually side-steps the genuine plot of 2nd Gen FE4. Now, this could be a good thing, because from what I've seen, 2nd Gen is generally regarded to be the weaker half dramatically. I like it for the Levin angle and the Thracia angle, but I'll admit I don't give a damn about half the kids and in many cases I prefer the replacement characters. But the execution of this is just... weird.
For one thing, it ends after the campaign for Thracia. Yep. No showdown with Alvis... who is barely mentioned, if he's actually mentioned at all. No shoe-drop about Julia's parentage. No climactic fight against Julius and Manfroy. It ends with Leaf and Celice teaming up to take out Trabant, and then Celice admits his affections for Rana. That's the ending. It's not as bad as the FE1 manga's ending, I guess.
Good Points:
1) Well, some of the arcs were fairly dramatic. Chapters 10/11, in which the Celice vs Aless subplot, the Leaf vs Blume subplot, and the Arthur&Tinny subplot all collided, was actually pretty powerful. The Levin & kids stuff was unrelenting in its harshness. And the Thracia campaign stirred up some feelings in my deeply biased breast.
2) The art wasn't crappy, despite some dubious choices for character hairstyles.
3) No Leen. I realize this won't count as a plus for many fans.
4) It was neat to see the world visualized.
On the other hand...
Boring Characters:
Half the cast is dullsville or comic relief, and whatever dramatic potential they had isn't really exploited. Then again, I'm not sure Lester has ANY dramatic potential to start with.
Leaf:
Oh, dear. Leaf receives a lot of screentime as Celice's sidekick. Given the way this thing wraps up in Thracia with a round of Trabant-killing, you might expect Leaf to be handled a certain way. I wasn't expecting him to be a smirking, immature, hyper, clingy little dolt who has to be kept on a very short leash. How short? Well, for a start, Finn lies to him for seventeen years, telling Leaf that Cuan and Ethlin died of disease. Why? Because Fuyuki's Leaf is so incompetent that Finn judges him as incapable of handling the truth about that desert massacre incident. If Leaf knew about Trabant, he'd ruin the entire strategic master-plan by bolting off to Thracia to raise hell because he's a selfish little twerp... and the sad thing is, Finn's right in this and even Leaf acknowledges it.
Choice quote-- "You're annoying. Shut up, Leaf." Granted, it's said by Aless the Grouch, but it's a fair assessment. In some scenes, Leaf comes across as the Mia to Celice's Ike, demanding a sparring session at inappropriate moments.
Understatement City:
Nanna describes her relationship with Delmud for the benefit of Aless: "We were raised separately because of parental issues." I have no idea what Fuyuki's interpretation of said issues were, though-- if Delmud explained it in an earlier chapter, I skipped it because of boring, and it never came up elsewhere. I don't recall that Delmud and Nanna even had a scene together. And this ties into the problem of a large and underutilized cast; Nanna's so thinly characterized that when she pops up as Leaf's love interest, it feels weird, because she was hardly even there to that point.
One-dimensional villains:
Trabant gets two dimensions, but he's still described as a coward who beat Altenna and treated her terribly. Alvis really doesn't come into it, Blume is deprived of any nuance he had in the games, and fan-favorite Ishtar is evil to the core in this telling.
Summer Camp With Holy Weapons:
Do I have to explain this?
And The Counselors Are Either Useless Or Creepy:
Levin takes the prize for Creepy; he's probably the single best thing in this adaptation. Shanan has one good moment. Oifey kind of disappears halfway through as the Thracia plot ramps up. And you get almost no sense of Finn as a knight who fights in wars and kills stuff; he's a babysitter with a lot of "heavy" secrets that get doled out as the plot requires it. He could've been Leaf's butler in most of his scenes.
Kissing Cousins:
Lester/Patty, and Faval has his eye on Rana until Celice declares that Rana's his girl. I usually don't mind cousin pairings, but the Jungby kids don't do it for me. We also have the oh-so-tidy Fee/Arthur and Sety/Tinny matchups. Meh.
I don't think I like Sety with anyone, really.
So, does the Gen 2 plotline stand on its own as a story? Not like this. The scenes where the kids are trailing the ghosts of their parents, like when Celice, Aless, and Leaf finally make nice (kind of) don't have the resonance they might have held, because there's almost no sense of who their famous parents even were. We don't know where half these kids came from, so the importance of where they're going is lessened considerably. And the manga isn't interested in the destination anyway-- it's all about building "support" relationships and making friends along the way. Actually winning, and settling scores and political issues is secondary. The important thing about killing Trabant isn't Leaf getting the vengeance he's dreamed of his entire life[*], it's about Celice and Leaf being able to admit that they need to team up and take on Trabant together.
* Again, this is a universe in which Leaf grows up thinking that Cuan and Ethlin died of the flu or whatever.
It's worth a read on a rainy Friday afternoon.
PS: Julia gets with Aless. That, I suppose, is why Leen ain't there.
This particular rumor is not true (though Celice does get upset when he catches Leaf and Nanna holding hands). That said, it's romance-driven in a way that actually side-steps the genuine plot of 2nd Gen FE4. Now, this could be a good thing, because from what I've seen, 2nd Gen is generally regarded to be the weaker half dramatically. I like it for the Levin angle and the Thracia angle, but I'll admit I don't give a damn about half the kids and in many cases I prefer the replacement characters. But the execution of this is just... weird.
For one thing, it ends after the campaign for Thracia. Yep. No showdown with Alvis... who is barely mentioned, if he's actually mentioned at all. No shoe-drop about Julia's parentage. No climactic fight against Julius and Manfroy. It ends with Leaf and Celice teaming up to take out Trabant, and then Celice admits his affections for Rana. That's the ending. It's not as bad as the FE1 manga's ending, I guess.
Good Points:
1) Well, some of the arcs were fairly dramatic. Chapters 10/11, in which the Celice vs Aless subplot, the Leaf vs Blume subplot, and the Arthur&Tinny subplot all collided, was actually pretty powerful. The Levin & kids stuff was unrelenting in its harshness. And the Thracia campaign stirred up some feelings in my deeply biased breast.
2) The art wasn't crappy, despite some dubious choices for character hairstyles.
3) No Leen. I realize this won't count as a plus for many fans.
4) It was neat to see the world visualized.
On the other hand...
Boring Characters:
Half the cast is dullsville or comic relief, and whatever dramatic potential they had isn't really exploited. Then again, I'm not sure Lester has ANY dramatic potential to start with.
Leaf:
Oh, dear. Leaf receives a lot of screentime as Celice's sidekick. Given the way this thing wraps up in Thracia with a round of Trabant-killing, you might expect Leaf to be handled a certain way. I wasn't expecting him to be a smirking, immature, hyper, clingy little dolt who has to be kept on a very short leash. How short? Well, for a start, Finn lies to him for seventeen years, telling Leaf that Cuan and Ethlin died of disease. Why? Because Fuyuki's Leaf is so incompetent that Finn judges him as incapable of handling the truth about that desert massacre incident. If Leaf knew about Trabant, he'd ruin the entire strategic master-plan by bolting off to Thracia to raise hell because he's a selfish little twerp... and the sad thing is, Finn's right in this and even Leaf acknowledges it.
Choice quote-- "You're annoying. Shut up, Leaf." Granted, it's said by Aless the Grouch, but it's a fair assessment. In some scenes, Leaf comes across as the Mia to Celice's Ike, demanding a sparring session at inappropriate moments.
Understatement City:
Nanna describes her relationship with Delmud for the benefit of Aless: "We were raised separately because of parental issues." I have no idea what Fuyuki's interpretation of said issues were, though-- if Delmud explained it in an earlier chapter, I skipped it because of boring, and it never came up elsewhere. I don't recall that Delmud and Nanna even had a scene together. And this ties into the problem of a large and underutilized cast; Nanna's so thinly characterized that when she pops up as Leaf's love interest, it feels weird, because she was hardly even there to that point.
One-dimensional villains:
Trabant gets two dimensions, but he's still described as a coward who beat Altenna and treated her terribly. Alvis really doesn't come into it, Blume is deprived of any nuance he had in the games, and fan-favorite Ishtar is evil to the core in this telling.
Summer Camp With Holy Weapons:
Do I have to explain this?
And The Counselors Are Either Useless Or Creepy:
Levin takes the prize for Creepy; he's probably the single best thing in this adaptation. Shanan has one good moment. Oifey kind of disappears halfway through as the Thracia plot ramps up. And you get almost no sense of Finn as a knight who fights in wars and kills stuff; he's a babysitter with a lot of "heavy" secrets that get doled out as the plot requires it. He could've been Leaf's butler in most of his scenes.
Kissing Cousins:
Lester/Patty, and Faval has his eye on Rana until Celice declares that Rana's his girl. I usually don't mind cousin pairings, but the Jungby kids don't do it for me. We also have the oh-so-tidy Fee/Arthur and Sety/Tinny matchups. Meh.
I don't think I like Sety with anyone, really.
So, does the Gen 2 plotline stand on its own as a story? Not like this. The scenes where the kids are trailing the ghosts of their parents, like when Celice, Aless, and Leaf finally make nice (kind of) don't have the resonance they might have held, because there's almost no sense of who their famous parents even were. We don't know where half these kids came from, so the importance of where they're going is lessened considerably. And the manga isn't interested in the destination anyway-- it's all about building "support" relationships and making friends along the way. Actually winning, and settling scores and political issues is secondary. The important thing about killing Trabant isn't Leaf getting the vengeance he's dreamed of his entire life[*], it's about Celice and Leaf being able to admit that they need to team up and take on Trabant together.
* Again, this is a universe in which Leaf grows up thinking that Cuan and Ethlin died of the flu or whatever.
It's worth a read on a rainy Friday afternoon.
PS: Julia gets with Aless. That, I suppose, is why Leen ain't there.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 07:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 01:08 pm (UTC)FE1 was hampered by artwork that was all over the place, not to mention the insanely abrupt ending. I read about two chapters of Hasha no Tsurugi and decided I wasn't spending another second on it. I think this was a fair attempt at dealing with a storyline that does have some dramatic weaknesses in the source material, but I strongly object to the way Leaf was depicted... and there was a LOT of Leaf. Celice had top billing, of course, but Leaf was the co-star here, and... I wanted to hit him about as much as Aless did.
It's one thing to take canon!Leaf, and notice his slip-ups and reckless moments and the parts where Finn has to rein him in, and decide that's the baseline you want to use for his characterization. Fine. Leaf has a lot of learning and growing to do. But the smirking and the sexual innuendo and the moments of sheer stupidity were just... embarrassing.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 01:09 pm (UTC)They all give up the quest and become interior decorators instead. It's zany!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 05:36 pm (UTC)