manga: Rasetsu Vol 1
Aug. 15th, 2009 01:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreNote: This post includes spoilers for the end of Yurara.
This is a book I was rather leery about reading, having previously read three of Chika Shiomi’s other licensed series. You see, two of them-Night of the Beasts and Canon-I have a considerable amount of love for. And then there’s Yurara. I loved Yurara initially, assuming, despite certain tropes and appearances, that it would turn around and live up to its predecessors. Instead, the more interesting characters and concepts were made secondary, and the series became increasingly devoted to tired tropes.
Rasetsu, a sequel series focusing on Yako, a main character from Yurara is, in short, the series I wanted Yurara to be. Set some years after Yurara Yako is now a librarian, and his library is now being haunted. He is no longer accompanied by the ghostly Yurara (Why oh why couldn’t that series have been about them instead?) and seems to believe that she is gone for good. He still has the ability to sense and bind ghosts, but can’t banish them, so when the library he works for is haunted, he hires an exorcist. At the agency he goes to is Rasetsu, a powerful young exorcist who looks exactly like the ghost he loved.
Naturally, he’s working at the agency before long.
Yako is stoic and cold and superserious and angsty without drowning in it or being mean to others because of it. And he’s in love with books. Rasetsu is confident and aggressive and very much in control of her sexuality. She, too, is angsty (and cursed to die in two years if she can’t break a curse a demon laid on her years before) but isn’t drowning in it, and is too busy doing things to mope much. There’s also the chief (I don’t think he was given a name) who can tell what a person’s ghostly problems are with a hug, Kuryu, who supposedly has no spiritual powers, but can wield powerful kotodona (spiritual commands) and who clearly has Sooper Sekrit Depths, and Aoi, who apparently just keeps the books.
I’m a bit worried regarding the fate of ghost!Yurara and the fact that Rasetsu looks exactly like her, but I also get a feeling from the book that’s strongly similar to Night of the Beasts, so I’m not too worried.
This is a book I was rather leery about reading, having previously read three of Chika Shiomi’s other licensed series. You see, two of them-Night of the Beasts and Canon-I have a considerable amount of love for. And then there’s Yurara. I loved Yurara initially, assuming, despite certain tropes and appearances, that it would turn around and live up to its predecessors. Instead, the more interesting characters and concepts were made secondary, and the series became increasingly devoted to tired tropes.
Rasetsu, a sequel series focusing on Yako, a main character from Yurara is, in short, the series I wanted Yurara to be. Set some years after Yurara Yako is now a librarian, and his library is now being haunted. He is no longer accompanied by the ghostly Yurara (Why oh why couldn’t that series have been about them instead?) and seems to believe that she is gone for good. He still has the ability to sense and bind ghosts, but can’t banish them, so when the library he works for is haunted, he hires an exorcist. At the agency he goes to is Rasetsu, a powerful young exorcist who looks exactly like the ghost he loved.
Naturally, he’s working at the agency before long.
Yako is stoic and cold and superserious and angsty without drowning in it or being mean to others because of it. And he’s in love with books. Rasetsu is confident and aggressive and very much in control of her sexuality. She, too, is angsty (and cursed to die in two years if she can’t break a curse a demon laid on her years before) but isn’t drowning in it, and is too busy doing things to mope much. There’s also the chief (I don’t think he was given a name) who can tell what a person’s ghostly problems are with a hug, Kuryu, who supposedly has no spiritual powers, but can wield powerful kotodona (spiritual commands) and who clearly has Sooper Sekrit Depths, and Aoi, who apparently just keeps the books.
I’m a bit worried regarding the fate of ghost!Yurara and the fact that Rasetsu looks exactly like her, but I also get a feeling from the book that’s strongly similar to Night of the Beasts, so I’m not too worried.