Saturday, April 27, 2013

Repetition

I talked a while ago about how despite some interesting ideas, I was unable to get myself invested in Toriko, a manga about a world obsessed with gourmet food and the people who brought it to them and prepared it.

Now this week, I started another series with a lot of elements I've seen a lot of times before - its about modern-day ninjas, a pretty teenage "chosen one" over whom the ninjas are fighting, there's a perky female sidekick, a steady friend, a dotty mentor, a main character thick with apathy...

But I really liked it. It seized me the way some of my favorites did in their first volume. I don't know that it will become a favorite - I suspect it very well may let me down later - but that feeling of hitting the first book and being yanked into the story so thoroughly is an amazing feeling I'll always adore when it happens :)

Things like this make me hyper aware of how difficult it is to determine what'll be good. I think the writing in this series may be better than in Toriko, or maybe the translation is? But from the outside I would have felt like I'd definitely like Toriko more. And yet... I guess that's why we really can't judge a book entirely by its cover.

I'll probably write more about the series as I get further into it, but here's the Goodreads review of the first volume

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