vision1's Manga
take a look at vision1's AnimeMy reviews of anime TV, Movies and OAV. They are meant to be read by anyone! (If you disagree strongly with my opinion, let me know. I love to talk/argue/rant about a series)
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| Dirty Pair (light novel) | Bad | "The Great Adventure of the DIRTY PAIR", by Haruka Takachiho. This book was written in 1979, and has now been translated and released by Darkhorse. Being a major DP fan, when I saw this book was coming out I had to buy it. I should have listened to the bad comment on Amazon (I usually ignore them) because, from a literary standpoint, this book really is very poor. The writing style is best described as childish- it sounds like something I would have written if my teacher in 7th grade asked me to write a story about space ships. If I had given him this, I would have been given a B. The narrative is told from the point of view of Kei, which is not so bad, because we are thrust directly into her character, which would be okay if it were more convincing, and more clever. But it is not. The writer has no sense, no feel, and no knowledge of his subject- which is sci-fi. Our villains wear "space jackets" and carry "ray guns", and the Lovely Angels ride around in "air cars" and have "heat guns". Of course they pilot a "space ship". Ugh. And it gets much worse. The book contains two stories, which are presented more as mysteries than action/adventure. But the girls basically follow their first suspect, then when they encounter "bad guys" they just start "firing lasers" and kill them all effortlessly- and without explanation. I trudged through a hundred pages of nonsense, and then finally, part way through the second story, it finally comes to life. In the scene about a hotel which the girls are staying in (and where they have a formal meeting with a client who wants the WWWA- whom they work for, to investigate something) the place just randomly catches fire. Unexplained how. Again, a missed oppurtunity, but the description of the fear, of the smoke, the heat, and the desperate escape is where the story becomes a page-turner. But then it goes back to being dense and silly, they go find the villains in their "air car" and just start shooting and that's that. My point is that, if you want to write a novel, write about the things you know about. It shows when you know your subject and when you don't. Takachiho was on a roll when he created an escape from a building-on-fire, and it was convincing, and gripping. But he clearly has no real feel of how to create a futuristic universe with space ships and science. The book has 20 illustrations- but they are hastily drawn sketches and don't add much to the story. The painting on the cover is probably the best part of the whole book. This is what the Dirty Pair originally looked like, you can see the influence of Star Wars with their light sabers. Despite this being a really bad book, it is still an important one- it is the beginning of the Dirty Pair series, which grew into a TV Show, several movies, and was still influential into the 1990s. You can even see it's influence in such well known anime as Cowboy Bebop, so it's importance can't be denied but you have to be a masochistic fan to actually want to read this book! I can't recommend it, it's just too painful to read! |