And it was supposed to be so beautiful – review of the comic book “Mythical Beast Scientist”

The intriguing cover and plot outline of Mythical Beasts Researchers allowed us to expect the adventures of Geralt of Rivia or Newt Scamander to be combined with original Japanese aesthetics and ingenuity. Unfortunately, the content of the volume does not stand out above the average.

The manga jacket is decorated with an atmospheric illustration of a cute little girl in a bright robe. This is Ferry Ehhena, the title character, who travels from one settlement to another, trying to solve the inhabitants’ problems with various types of magical creatures. She is accompanied by the cute Toro bat and Kushuuna – hidden in the shadows, mysterious and powerful creature resembling an anthropomorphic hare with red-glowing eyes.

Zero Style Manga

The researcher of mythical beasts was created on the basis of Keishi Ayasato’s novel illustrated by an artist nicknamed lack. The comic adaptation by Koichito Hoshino is correct both plot and aesthetically, but doesn’t offer anything unique.

Mangaka is hard to deny having a solid artistic technique. The events are clearly presented and the action scenes, especially with Kushuuna, are dynamic and efficiently composed. Nevertheless, it is difficult to say that the drawings in The Researcher … are unforgettable . The more so as the world in which the story is set is painfully clichéd. Most of its elements – from characters to the title creatures to architecture and landscapes – look like they’ve been pulled from some collection of European-style fantasy templates. Against this background, only the designs of the main characters stand out, in particular the long-earned lord of darkness.

A waste of space

Japanese comic book writers usually take their time telling a story, using multiple pages to build the atmosphere, accurately depict the action or simply display. For this reason, shorter plots, packed in one or two volumes, often seem barely sketched, incomplete or simply banal. I have the impression that it was the poor layout of the story that made reading Mythical Beasts Researcher not too addictive.

Almost all chapters of the manga focus on single cases solved by Ferry and are not related to any leitmotif that would constitute a plot frame. The episodic construction itself is not a flaw, as long as the stories told are sufficiently original and engaging. In the case of the Researcher … only the last chapters stand out, revealing the genesis of the acquaintance of the protagonist and Kuushuna to the readers and slightly deepening the characters of both characters. It is a pity that this theme has been reduced de facto to the role of an epilogue, and that half of the Polish single-volume book (i.e. the entire first volume of the original edition) is devoted to much less interesting stories.

Nothingness

Koichito Hoshino’s comic book does not stand out with anything special. It was drawn neatly, but nothing more than that. The first half of the reading is rather boring, and when a slightly more interesting story appears, the story ends. Ultimately, Mythical Beast Investigator is not a bad manga. In fact, it is difficult to say what it is like. And this is probably its biggest drawback.