The Fall 2017 Manga Guide

Sword Oratoria

What's It About? 

“In the city of Orario, groups of adventurers live together in groups known as familias, presided over by a god or goddess descended to earth. One of the most powerful is the Loki Familia, which counts many strong adventurers among its members. Of them, Aiz Wallenstein the Sword Princess is one of the best known. But Aiz isn't comfortable with her own fame, even as she strives to grow even stronger, and she worries that her friends find her frightening. All of this is really driven home when she rescues a young white-haired adventurer from a rampaging minotaur…and he runs away. Can Aiz learn how to interact with others alongside improving her fighting techniques? Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria is based on a light novel and was published by Yen Press in October.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 1.5

I don't know why this one particular light novel, itself a spinoff of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? – is so hard to adapt well. Perhaps it's because Aiz isn't a typical anime and manga heroine: she's powerful, not cute, and lacks a lot of typically “endearing” qualities, like clumsiness or being a secret tsundere. Whatever the reason, Takashi Yagi's manga version of Fujino Ōmori's original books is a disappointment, albeit in a different way than the anime adaptation was.

A large part of the problem is that the manga feels the need to make everything and everyone (except Finn and Gareth) adorable. This goes for the art and a few of the added in story bits, such as a cooking scene with levels and “attack” names. Aiz, who is written as not wearing her emotions on her face in the novels, gets a super-cute makeover, with big round eyes, a tendency to blush, and far more expression than she ever shows in general. While I can understand why this particular decision was made, it doesn't fit with the character, creating a sense that this isn't so much an adaptation as a totally different character who just so happens to have the same name as the one in the novels. And if her half-breast plate annoyed you in the anime, just wait until you see it now – that lower portion is still missing on one boob, and now the fully-covered one has had its side sheared away! At this point there's barely any reason for Aiz to be wearing that thing as armor, and given that Yagi isn't great at drawing the upper halves of women's bodies, it doesn't count for much as fanservice either.

The story itself does follow the original plot closely, but at times seems to have forgotten that it's manga, and therefore does not need to rely on narration to tell its story. There's an excess of American comic-style narrative boxes that distract and disrupt the flow of the story, and Loki's infodump as she updates Aiz's status at the end is just awkward in terms of storytelling. The one truly good thing I can say is that there's less Lefiya than there was in the anime and one fun Finn thought bubble.

It isn't always the case that the original version of a story is the best, but with Sword Oratoria, we seem to have found our exception. Skip the anime, skip the manga, and just read the original light novels.

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Amy McNulty

Rating:

Despite being a spin-off, Sword Oratoria volume 1 adroitly stands on its own. Readers familiar with the Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? light novels (or the anime and manga adaptations) will no doubt get the most out of this series and will understand the meaning behind protagonist Aiz's encounter with the young adventurer who freaks out after she rescues him in a dungeon. Nonetheless, prior knowledge isn't necessary for readers, as this Loki Familia-centric story puts taciturn and enigmatic super swordswoman, Aiz Wallenstein, in the spotlight. In doing so, this first volume is responsible for Aiz losing some of her appeal from the original series. She's no longer the untouchable wonder woman—but that's not necessarily a bad thing. That said, Aiz is still subdued, easily drowned out by the more loquacious members of her Familia: Lefiya, Tiona, and Tione. Still, when the chips are down, Aiz comes to the fore, securing victory against impossible odds alongside her Familia's skilled captain, Finn.

The bond between the girls that comprise the main cast is palpable and although the story far too often relies on tired fanservice tropes for levity, there are some genuine emotions behind their interactions. Despite the danger the Familia is sometimes in during quests, the story hasn't taken a dark turn yet, and in avoiding grimmer moments—in addition to the fanservice fluff—this first volume is hard to take too seriously. It's enjoyable, but not overly memorable, either.

Yagi's character designs, while based on Kiyotaka Haimura and Suzuhito Yasuda's design work, have a distinct moe feel to them that's also partially responsible for the shallowness of the narrative. It's especially jarring to see Aiz, the skilled and near-silent warrior, depicted in an adorable style, though the designs suit her bubbly companions well enough. The monster battles lose some of their impact because Aiz and Finn in particular don't have the physical presence to pull off the seriousness of those moments. On the other hand, the monsters and backgrounds are highly detailed and oftentimes frightening, which helps the battle scenes stand out. The action is particularly well drawn, especially during the party members' special attacks.

Sword Oratoria volume 1 successfully expands on the world established in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, shifting the focus to an essential if underused character from the original series. While this first volume is shallower than an epic fantasy series demands, that's not entirely at odds with the tone of the original work, either. Sword Oratoria is a worthwhile read for existing fans and also not a bad starting point for anyone new to the franchise.

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Austin Price

Rating:

Sword Oratoria looks so much better than the range of other quickly-made spin-offs and cash-ins that it's easy to be tricked into thinking it's exceptional on all levels. If Fujino Ōmori's predictable storytelling choices make swordswoman Aiz Wallenstein seem so invincible that it renders her obsession with growing stronger completely unbelievable, Takashi Yagi's eye for scale and scope might convince you that the hordes of beautifully realized rhinomen or acid blooded grubs – or their titanic queen – crammed into a single panel are threatening enough that maybe she should be concerned. Of course, his demonstration of Aiz's techniques and Lefiya's spells immediately makes it clear they really warrant no anxiety, but such frantic, effects-heavy displays embody a kind of fun and personality absent from the slow party-bonding in-between.

Only, as with every other addition to the ever-expanding Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? monster, Sword Oratoria is a series so obsessed with the most shallow aspects of the dungeon-crawling genre that it never bothers to understand why people really play them in the first place. The focus on combat, the obsession with quantifiable stats and rankings that turns these abstract signifiers into the actual systems governing the world, the fixation on the minutiae of mythology and the glorification of power, the nominal nods to character development: these are only the windowdressing of dungeon-crawlers.

Better series understand that what truly fascinates us about dungeon-crawlers is the promise of discovery and the tension that comes with risk. It's unlikely that most people consider Blame! an example of the genre, but in reality it's the apex of its type because it combines that familiar formula with Niheii's nightmarish artistic sensibilities and brilliant play with scale to tap directly into the dread all players feel when they stray far, far beyond their bounds. Delicious in Dungeon may look at first factory-made, but the way it rewards readers' constant desire to discover the unseen, the exciting, by investing even the most shopworn of monster designs with new and thrilling dimensions through a clever gimmick is remarkable to see. Niheii and Kui know that what's fun about the action and stats is not observing it or in powering through it; watching others grind out or fight epic conflicts is only acceptable when we don't have the option to do so ourselves.

Sword Oratoria makes overtures to this, insisting that the mysterious dungeon holds untold secrets and an origin beyond even the god's knowledge, but as pretty as it all looks nothing here seems new or strange. All that leaves are the interactions between characters who look like they were cribbed from the pages of a dust-covered D&D handbook Omori had sitting on his shelf, and that's simply not enough justify investing time into yet another entry in this franchise, this genre.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

Hestia and her blue string were all the rage in 2015 but for whatever reason, the staff involved where unable to capitalize on it and keep that train rolling. Instead, an adaptation of the spin-off focusing on the stoic sword princess Aiz Wallenstein was made instead. It was one of the first series to go exclusively to Anime Strike and since I hadn't picked up a membership, I never got around to watching it. So while I've seen all of DanMachi, the events of Sword Oratoria are new to me. “Neat,” I thought. “A chance to see the dungeon from the point of view of a colorful cast of female warriors!”

I, too, hold on to a small shard of hope that each adaptation with a large female cast may, in fact, present them in a realistic and interesting way. Unfortunately today I was wrong.

Often when staff set out to run manga adaptations of light novels and games, regardless of the original's content, they seek out adult doujin artists for the job. I cannot tell you why, but the first immediate example that comes to mind is the manga version of From the New World. “But Lynzee!” you say, “From the New World had canonical sexual themes!” And that's true. But the sheer horniness of the artwork bled into literally everything, even the most mundane situations. Sword Oratoria is a ship of the same make. Artist Takashi Yagi has no other credits to his name except a comic anthology based on Kakegurui. I can't confirm if he was popular on pixiv or at Comiket, but I can complain about his rendition of Aiz's armor and his panel perspectives that put characters' vulva in the foreground.

Aiz's armor is canonically a white dress covered by a partial breastplate with knee and arm guards. Illogical but not particularly skimpy which I guess wasn't enticing enough because Yagi renders it like the dress is made of skin-tight latex. If you pair that with the fact that it's stark white and plenty of the panels don't show Aiz's bottom half, you don't have to squint very hard interpret her as partially topless. Not that there isn't plenty of genuine (nippleless) nudity in the volume anyway. The entire adventure wraps up with Loki perving out on the girls and getting a few grabs in on the most modest party member.

There's also caterpillar monsters whose sucker feet double visually as large, gaping nipples that excrete acid. The visual will be obvious to anyone who has come across a particular hentai style. I found it particularly gross as a person who has mild trypophobia.

Arguably the most egregious misstep int his spin-off is that it offers no interesting insights into Aiz at all. For the main protagonist, she speaks just as little as she does in DanMachi nor are there any hints into her personal motivation for adventuring beyond, literally, a desire to be strong. I am no further invested in her character by the end of the volume than I was when she saved Bell back in the original anime, further proving that the series isn't much without Hestia around.