Known for his preference of manga of a more romantic comedy nature, Coengar2 again steps out of his comfort zone and takes a look at a horror title suffering from an identity crisis.

Title: Judas

Publisher: Tokyopop

Genre: Horror

Age: Older Teen 16+

Volumes: 2 so far out of 5

Violence: Yep with blood

Sex/Nudity: Fanservice some minor sexual dialog and themes

Status: New series, Still being published

Mizuki is a prodigy, she had a PhD by the time she was 16 and a multimillionaire by the age of 18. What she didn’t have was any sense of family. Her parents are both dead and her older brother is another prodigy and is busy making cutting edge advances in Bio-technology. Despite her success, Mizuki suffers from depression and constantly thinks of suicide. Only her desire to help one of her rare friends, a young and rather awkward girl named Eve has so far prevented her from carrying out the act. Eve is shy and tends to act rather nervous. She makes a living by working the occassional odd job and by selling food on the streets. Taking pity on the poor girl, Mizuki drags Eve back to her apartment determined to give her a real meal, besides the ever present hamburgers that Eve seems to be always eating, and a hot bath. It is while trying to force the struggling Eve into the tub that Mizuki learns the first of Eve’s secrets, Eve is actually a boy. Trying to deal with this revelation Mizuki heads over to her brother’s place with Eve right behind unnoticed by Mizuki. To her horror, Mizuki discovers that her brother has decided to test his finding on a human test subject and has chosen a weak hearted orphan girl as his first subject. The girl just happens to be another rare friend of Mizuki which causes Mizuki to interfer with her brother’s plans and lead to his choice to use Mizuki as a test subject instead. But before he can do so, Eve rushes into the room to try and stop him but is rewarded with a sword through the throat instead. Both siblings watch in horror as instead of dropping dead from the impalement, Eve’s blood begins to spread out in a wide pool and a tall male figure rises from the blood. Eve it seems is possessed by Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, cursed to wander the earth until he has claimed the souls of 666 people. However, Judas can not touch or even interact with people and must take possession of Eve through his spilled blood which let’s Judas turn the bumbling Eve into his gothic lolita angel of destruction and murder. Mizuki and her friend desperately try to find a way to save Eve from Judas but are drawn into the plans of a holy order dedicated to his destruction.

GOOD POINTS: The artwork is good and the story is enjoyable. Watching the character interaction is rather fun.

BAD POINTS: Too much slapstick comedy deminishes the horror atmosphere of the series.

OVERALL REVIEW: Let’s be honest, for any good horror story to be effective the viewer must develope some kind of attachment to the characters or they just wont care what fate befalls the characters which lessens the impact of when the spooky stuff starts. I really couldnt care less for most of the characters in this series. Mizuki is skilled but often aloof and seemingly uncaring. It seems as if her role in the story is too simply bring and hold the other characters together. Judas is a jerk with a bad boy attitude and sense of humour that detracts from him coming across as the major evil bad guy that he’s suppose to be. I mean good grief, here he is possessing an innocent boy and turning him into a serial killer and he spends a lot of time humilating the boy (usually by making him dress as a girl) and complaining that he cant get drunk or laid. Kind of makes him less scary, know what i mean? As for Eve, he is simply comic relief. He’s the butt of Judas’s pranks, the receiver of Mizuki’s sarcasm and basically is a good natured but weak willed nervous wreck. Even when transformed into Judas’s angel of destruction, he looks like a long haired goth girl in a black dress and holding a way oversized scythe. You could literally take Eve from this series and place him in one like GIRLS BRAVO or Maburaho and he’d fit right in. (Usually as one of the girls) But i will give the series this, when it’s in horror mode with it’s damned souls seeking release, occult conspiracies and violent bloodshed it’s not a bad story. And when it’s in comedy mode, it can be pretty darn funny. But the series tries to be both and in the end it weakens what could have been a much better series. However, i did enjoy it enough that i probably will add it to my collection. Thankfully it’s only 5 volumes in length.

Other Manga Notes:

This month sees the release of HOT GIMMICK S, a novelization of the manga series that has only a few differences in the storyline. However it has a different ending in that Hatsumi chooses someone other than Ryoki as her final boyfriend. There’s a clue in the title about who she chooses.

Trivia answer time:

With Ranma 1/2 now out of print and no longer the longest running manga in U.S. history, what series can now claim the title?

If you guessed Oh! My Goddess, published by Dark Horse and begining it’s U.S. print run in the late 80′s, than give yourself an Otaku brownie point ! More trivia in later reviews.