The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Grace Rosa

What's It About? 

Grace Rosa is an assassin driven by a single thing: discovering the secret of her adoptive father's disappearance. He trained her to become a lethal killing machine, able to wield any weapon she could get her hands on, before inducting her into the ranks of the shadowy organization known as Alterna. But could the very people she serves as a hired gun have something to do with him vanishing? And to what lengths will she go to enact her vengeance on the people who have wronged her?

Grace Rosa is a manga by Himuro. This volume is translated by Motoko Tamamuro and Jonathan Clements and lettered and retouched by Tom Williams. Published by Titan Manga (March 26, 2024).

Content Warning: rape, sexual violence

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Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay
Rating:

Sometimes I read a manga that feels like the storyboard for a live-action movie. This is probably the best way I can describe Grace Rosa, and this isn't a bad thing. The setup is very familiar with a quirky and socially awkward main character who is incredibly skilled at committing violent acts on the lookout for somebody who once saved them from a tragic upbringing. Some stories only have a premise. Our protagonist joins a secret organization, has an established reputation that precedes them and, in many ways, that's all you need. While there are some moments of nuance here when we get into the tragedy of our main character and the circumstances of who she is looking for, it doesn't feel like that's one of the main things the book is selling itself on. This is especially the case when you consider the ending which just sort of stops.

No, you're here for the action and the artwork. It's detailed, it's dynamic and it is incredibly bloody. You have people with body parts blown off of them and guts spilling out of their sides. Some pages are cluttered with detail to the point where you could almost argue that it works against the book. Thankfully, it never really reaches that point despite getting close. I can generally tell what is going on on the page at any given time and that's because the book doesn't demand a lot from its reader. There are some unsavory things as we get into the dark underbelly of the criminal underworld and the people who are assassination targets, but even then, it feels like those things are more so there just to justify the book's action. It's not a bad read by any means, but one that feels ultimately disposable. It's like getting on a roller coaster; you enjoy the ride in the moment but once the thrill is gone, you're ready to move on to the next thing.

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Christopher Farris
Rating:

Grace Rosa opens on hardly the most original beats, but they don't necessarily need to be. I am a simple man. I'm happy to see a badass assassin lady spend dozens of pages murdering bunches of dudes. There is some standardized context setting things up, the titular Rosa having been rescued from rough times by an adoptive father she's seeking to find in all this ultraviolence. The dynamic shootout setpieces could carry the book far enough. But the rest of the content is roughly 50% mooks shouting some variation of "Bitch!" with the rest being awkwardly delivered exposition as they stand around waiting to get merc'd. It's capped off with some nonsensical writing about a hostage situation, and then the book's a quarter over, and we still have no idea what's going on here.

Being so short and simple, Grace Rosa is happy to play in the shallow end of trope-y concepts that have powered denser works with similar over-the-top spirit, like Black Lagoon. But it can't even get around to clarifying the precise deal with the organization Rosa belongs to, apart from them being some…criminal organization that specializes in killing criminals. You have to shrug your shoulders and go along for the ride. What's there fills out the middle of the volume with still more stylish killing and a fair amount of violence (sexual and otherwise) against women. At least you get to see Rosa shoot a human trafficker in the dick.

Unfortunately, just when the story gets going, with Rosa getting wrapped up in a complex web of mob infighting that dear old Dad might be party to, Grace Rosa went and got herself canceled. The flash-forward to a recap of something vaguely resembling an ending does what was left of the story no favors. It's an artifact of author Himuro grasping for some sort of closure as the ax was coming down, but it only rings as cheap and hollow as if the story had just stopped mid-beat. At least it confirms Grace Rosa as ultimately nothing particularly big or special—entirely skip-worthy.