manga: Orfina Vol 1
Aug. 14th, 2008 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreThis manga has wolves with unicorn horns. I just want to say that up front. (They’re called “kulfia.” Anyone know if it comes from anything?)
Fana is a young warrior from an as-yet-unnamed country that has recently fallen to the country of Granze. After her companions fall to Granze soldiers within the borders of Cordia, a neighbor country of Granze’s, Fana is found unconscious in the forest by the king of Cordia and his kulfia, Triffa. When Fana wakes up three days later, she’s in the royal palace, and learns that she’s the mirror image of Orfina, the crown princess of Cordia. At this point, I willfully suspend my belief for a bit, as Fana is quickly welcomed into the royal family (when he finds her, the king pauses to wonder if there’s any way he could have fathered an illegitimate child) and becomes best friends with Orfina. She also starts warning the king and his advisors about the dangers of Granze, and almost falls victim to an assassin, though it isn’t clear whether the assassin was after her or Orfina.
Even if it weren’t stated on the back cover, the book is clearly leading to a situation where Fana takes Orfina’s place and leads Cordia against Granze. While the handling of Orfina and the royal family was a little too handwavey-medieval-lite-fluffyness, the overall handling is pretty serious and heavy. While Cordia, as well as the costumes of Fana and the Granze soldiers, are pretty firmly medieval European, the Granze soldiers carry guns of various types. Fana knows how to use the guns we’ve seen, and her sword is made of a material no one in Cordia has ever seen before, and which can slice through armor. There are also dragons (which Fana calls Fire Dragons) which we never get a good look at, but the small glimpse we do get of one suggests the mechanical to me.
Fana is also fairly closemouthed about her own country. She lets the royal family offer up opinions about the resemblance between her and Orfina, but doesn’t really offer her own thoughts on the subject, and she says little about her country-or her weapons knowledge-but is very open about the dangers of Granze, and how to fight them. I’m suspecting this will be one of these series that starts out seeming to be high fantasy, but is eventually revealed to be scifi. So far, the emphasis has been on the dangers of Granze, and Fana’s bonding with the royal family. There’s no sign of anything resembling romance yet, and I’m betting the only characters we have now who will be around for long are Fana and Triffa.
Between this, Claymore and Dorothea, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of rule in Japan that says any manga that centers around a girl with a sword who gets to use it instead of playing second fiddle to a guy has to be set in a faux-medieval Europe. Like Dorothea, Orfina gets a “Mature” rating from CMX. In this case, for “language, violence, suggestive situations.” It doesn’t, though, seem to have much more going for it than most other manga, and less so for others (though, the whole “tongue down the throat without permission to say ‘Hi! I missed you!’” in Dorothea still has me giving it suspicious eyes regarding possible future developments) but who knows where it could go in that department.
I think I shall try to unearth the copy of Vol 2 I think I have when I get home.
Fana is a young warrior from an as-yet-unnamed country that has recently fallen to the country of Granze. After her companions fall to Granze soldiers within the borders of Cordia, a neighbor country of Granze’s, Fana is found unconscious in the forest by the king of Cordia and his kulfia, Triffa. When Fana wakes up three days later, she’s in the royal palace, and learns that she’s the mirror image of Orfina, the crown princess of Cordia. At this point, I willfully suspend my belief for a bit, as Fana is quickly welcomed into the royal family (when he finds her, the king pauses to wonder if there’s any way he could have fathered an illegitimate child) and becomes best friends with Orfina. She also starts warning the king and his advisors about the dangers of Granze, and almost falls victim to an assassin, though it isn’t clear whether the assassin was after her or Orfina.
Even if it weren’t stated on the back cover, the book is clearly leading to a situation where Fana takes Orfina’s place and leads Cordia against Granze. While the handling of Orfina and the royal family was a little too handwavey-medieval-lite-fluffyness, the overall handling is pretty serious and heavy. While Cordia, as well as the costumes of Fana and the Granze soldiers, are pretty firmly medieval European, the Granze soldiers carry guns of various types. Fana knows how to use the guns we’ve seen, and her sword is made of a material no one in Cordia has ever seen before, and which can slice through armor. There are also dragons (which Fana calls Fire Dragons) which we never get a good look at, but the small glimpse we do get of one suggests the mechanical to me.
Fana is also fairly closemouthed about her own country. She lets the royal family offer up opinions about the resemblance between her and Orfina, but doesn’t really offer her own thoughts on the subject, and she says little about her country-or her weapons knowledge-but is very open about the dangers of Granze, and how to fight them. I’m suspecting this will be one of these series that starts out seeming to be high fantasy, but is eventually revealed to be scifi. So far, the emphasis has been on the dangers of Granze, and Fana’s bonding with the royal family. There’s no sign of anything resembling romance yet, and I’m betting the only characters we have now who will be around for long are Fana and Triffa.
Between this, Claymore and Dorothea, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of rule in Japan that says any manga that centers around a girl with a sword who gets to use it instead of playing second fiddle to a guy has to be set in a faux-medieval Europe. Like Dorothea, Orfina gets a “Mature” rating from CMX. In this case, for “language, violence, suggestive situations.” It doesn’t, though, seem to have much more going for it than most other manga, and less so for others (though, the whole “tongue down the throat without permission to say ‘Hi! I missed you!’” in Dorothea still has me giving it suspicious eyes regarding possible future developments) but who knows where it could go in that department.
I think I shall try to unearth the copy of Vol 2 I think I have when I get home.