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3.27 AVERAGE
3.27 AVERAGE
This first volume was an enjoyable start to a fantasy shonen series. It's very early 2000s shonen. Reminds of things like Dragon Ball and InuYasha. We follow a fourteen year old boy who dreams up another world. One day he gets sucked into that world and couldn't be happier. This is a cute manga so far, and I'm looking forward to what happens next.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Oh man, such nostalgia! I remember watching the anime when I was little and reading the manga now reminds me of simpler times.
The story is quirky and a bit ridiculous, which is what I love about it! Ginta is goofy, has his head in the clouds (like I used to), and is just full of wonder that makes you immediately want to root for him! I always thought him meeting Dorothy first then Jack was odd since most stories have you meet the soon-to-be best friend or extra loyal companion. From what I remember about the anime, the character relationships were pretty balanced - another thing I love about MÄR!
I’ll be honest, I’m most looking forward to when Ginta meets Alviss and Nanashi because those are some of my favorite characters! After finally getting my hands on this manga and loving it as much as the first episode of the anime I watched way back when, I’m excited to get further into the story!
The story is quirky and a bit ridiculous, which is what I love about it! Ginta is goofy, has his head in the clouds (like I used to), and is just full of wonder that makes you immediately want to root for him! I always thought him meeting Dorothy first then Jack was odd since most stories have you meet the soon-to-be best friend or extra loyal companion. From what I remember about the anime, the character relationships were pretty balanced - another thing I love about MÄR!
I’ll be honest, I’m most looking forward to when Ginta meets Alviss and Nanashi because those are some of my favorite characters! After finally getting my hands on this manga and loving it as much as the first episode of the anime I watched way back when, I’m excited to get further into the story!
A forgettable series with mediocre to eyeroll-worthy art and a story that creates and then drops plot threads faster than you can realize that you just wasted your time reading this series. And faster than I realized that this is almost tit-for-tat the meat of "Flame of Rekka", but half the length. I guess Anzai Noboyuki just really liked that one story, but thought "why not make it more like a Western-style fantasy video game, but shorter?"
The art improved since "Flame of Rekka", but it's still not a great art style. It's not atrocious. It's the generic "big limbs, tiny bodies, I can only design three female characters but an endless trove of largely freakish male ones". Lots of women fall in love with the shounen protagonist because that's how shounen work. The series is so short that half the story - training - takes place off panel because there's just too much of it. But, as we're told helpfully by Generic Sexy Catgirl in somehow a worse outfit than a catsuit, that training is making them there generic heroes strong! I haven't even mentioned the roofying plot thread (point? Bounce?). But it's okay! Because... it's a permanent roofie! ...Yay? Also, the subtitle series should be "Anti-climactic", because that's far more appropriate (e.g., the primary antagonist's plotline) than calling your fairly typical shounen tournament storyline "Marchen awakens romance", given that although there are a few romances in the series, they are almost universally pushed backstage whenever they happen to pop out of the graves they're buried in.
I know there are better forgettable generic shounen out there than this, but I can't remember them, because they're forgettable generic shounen. Literally the only saving grace about this one is that it is short, unlike "Flame of Rekka", which is 33 volumes.
The art improved since "Flame of Rekka", but it's still not a great art style. It's not atrocious. It's the generic "big limbs, tiny bodies, I can only design three female characters but an endless trove of largely freakish male ones". Lots of women fall in love with the shounen protagonist because that's how shounen work. The series is so short that half the story - training - takes place off panel because there's just too much of it. But, as we're told helpfully by Generic Sexy Catgirl in somehow a worse outfit than a catsuit, that training is making them there generic heroes strong! I haven't even mentioned the roofying plot thread (point? Bounce?). But it's okay! Because... it's a permanent roofie! ...Yay? Also, the subtitle series should be "Anti-climactic", because that's far more appropriate (e.g., the primary antagonist's plotline) than calling your fairly typical shounen tournament storyline "Marchen awakens romance", given that although there are a few romances in the series, they are almost universally pushed backstage whenever they happen to pop out of the graves they're buried in.
I know there are better forgettable generic shounen out there than this, but I can't remember them, because they're forgettable generic shounen. Literally the only saving grace about this one is that it is short, unlike "Flame of Rekka", which is 33 volumes.
This was never a series I was necessarily into, back in high school, but I recall a friend foisting the first two volumes onto me with the request I read them and draw the characters for her. I only really remember having read them once and never again, so it was nice to revisit this first volume after finding a copy.
MAR: Marchen Awakens Romance is a fun little isekai that came out in the early 2000s that should appeal to video game fans in particular. We begin by meeting our rather unimpressive protagonist Ginta, and get the sense he's been connected to this other world for a long time before the doorway ever appears to take him there. And of course, the instant said portal appears he leaps on the chance to visit this world he's been dreaming about, where he learns [to his surprise and delight] that he has none of the shortcomings in this world that he suffers from in our own. Almost right away he's picked up by a mysterious witch named Dorothy, who somewhat begrudgingly teaches him about enchanted weapons in this world called Arms. This culminates in her tricking Ginta into assisting her with finding a particularly rare and legendary Arm, Babbo, only for Ginta to discover Babbo lives and can talk, and the two end up adventuring together as Babbo seeks for his missing past and Ginta takes in every bit of this world as he's able.
As far as shonen titles go, I'm still mildly surprised that this wasn't published in Shonen Jump (either in the Viz translations or in Japan,) but I'm delighted that Viz produced the English editions nonetheless, as they do seem to pick up a lot of decent, classic shonen titles. MAR is absolutely a title I feel like a lot of people can have fun with, if what you want is a silly, fun little adventure romp that evokes a lot of video game nostalgia. I've yet to continue on to the next volumes (though I do have a copy of volume 2 already,) but I have a feeling that sentiment is probably going to remain even as I continue to go through the remainder of the series.
MAR: Marchen Awakens Romance is a fun little isekai that came out in the early 2000s that should appeal to video game fans in particular. We begin by meeting our rather unimpressive protagonist Ginta, and get the sense he's been connected to this other world for a long time before the doorway ever appears to take him there. And of course, the instant said portal appears he leaps on the chance to visit this world he's been dreaming about, where he learns [to his surprise and delight] that he has none of the shortcomings in this world that he suffers from in our own. Almost right away he's picked up by a mysterious witch named Dorothy, who somewhat begrudgingly teaches him about enchanted weapons in this world called Arms. This culminates in her tricking Ginta into assisting her with finding a particularly rare and legendary Arm, Babbo, only for Ginta to discover Babbo lives and can talk, and the two end up adventuring together as Babbo seeks for his missing past and Ginta takes in every bit of this world as he's able.
As far as shonen titles go, I'm still mildly surprised that this wasn't published in Shonen Jump (either in the Viz translations or in Japan,) but I'm delighted that Viz produced the English editions nonetheless, as they do seem to pick up a lot of decent, classic shonen titles. MAR is absolutely a title I feel like a lot of people can have fun with, if what you want is a silly, fun little adventure romp that evokes a lot of video game nostalgia. I've yet to continue on to the next volumes (though I do have a copy of volume 2 already,) but I have a feeling that sentiment is probably going to remain even as I continue to go through the remainder of the series.