From Far Away
Dec. 22nd, 2009 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aimeekittyDay 23 (early)
From Far Away 彼方から is a fantasy shojo manga of the best sort. It's an uplifting story set in an actual fantasy world with mythical creatures, action, magic and truly lovable characters.
I liked it so much that I devoured it in a few days, and then had to draw this. Forgive me, big-eyed anime characters are just not really my style, but I gave it a shot anyway. :)
fave on DA
The base story is very similar to Twelve Kingdoms or Fushigi Yūgi (ie, Japanese schoolgirl gets sucked into a fantasy world and is the chosen one)... except unlike Fushigi Yūgi, it doesn't suck. (sorry FY fans. Miaka is really friggin annoying and I'm not really a Watase fan, either.) You really really like the characters in From Far Away. Noriko and Izark, the leads, every moment they have together is super adorable. And not just their faces... actually, it's their whole body language which portrays how they feel about each other. At first, seeing the cover art, it looked kinda old-school big-eyed anime to me... I wasn't attracted to it, but once you start reading, you get used to the art, and the artist is actually quite masterful within her parameters. She's particularly great at giving Noriko super adorable poses (even just sitting on a bed is super adorable) ... giving Izark amazing fighting or acrobatic poses... and particularly good at handling folding or flowing clothes.
Also, if you like Kyo and Tohru from Fruits Basket, you'll definitely see shades of them in Izark and Noriko. Izark and Noriko are really their own characters... they aren't derivative, but Noriko is a kind, positive, hard working girl in the same way Tohru is,... and Izark is worried about becoming a monster, like Kyo was. What's great about Izark though is that you get the feeling that he's a mature male character, he's not a teenage boy. And this is more than just a "and then the two leads get together and the manga is then over" story. (And it's also not a "they get together and then some bitch breaks them up and then they get together again and then it's over story...)
Read it, it'll tug at your heartstrings. I can tell already that it's going to be one of my top favorites that I'll read again and again.
I'm actually surprised that the series concluded as recently as 2004,... the art and story feels like such an old-school classic! Also surprised it hasn't been made into an anime, it's perfectly suited for it.
You can read an extended review of volumes 1-5 here by swanjun.
From Far Away 彼方から is a fantasy shojo manga of the best sort. It's an uplifting story set in an actual fantasy world with mythical creatures, action, magic and truly lovable characters.
I liked it so much that I devoured it in a few days, and then had to draw this. Forgive me, big-eyed anime characters are just not really my style, but I gave it a shot anyway. :)
fave on DA
The base story is very similar to Twelve Kingdoms or Fushigi Yūgi (ie, Japanese schoolgirl gets sucked into a fantasy world and is the chosen one)... except unlike Fushigi Yūgi, it doesn't suck. (sorry FY fans. Miaka is really friggin annoying and I'm not really a Watase fan, either.) You really really like the characters in From Far Away. Noriko and Izark, the leads, every moment they have together is super adorable. And not just their faces... actually, it's their whole body language which portrays how they feel about each other. At first, seeing the cover art, it looked kinda old-school big-eyed anime to me... I wasn't attracted to it, but once you start reading, you get used to the art, and the artist is actually quite masterful within her parameters. She's particularly great at giving Noriko super adorable poses (even just sitting on a bed is super adorable) ... giving Izark amazing fighting or acrobatic poses... and particularly good at handling folding or flowing clothes.
Also, if you like Kyo and Tohru from Fruits Basket, you'll definitely see shades of them in Izark and Noriko. Izark and Noriko are really their own characters... they aren't derivative, but Noriko is a kind, positive, hard working girl in the same way Tohru is,... and Izark is worried about becoming a monster, like Kyo was. What's great about Izark though is that you get the feeling that he's a mature male character, he's not a teenage boy. And this is more than just a "and then the two leads get together and the manga is then over" story. (And it's also not a "they get together and then some bitch breaks them up and then they get together again and then it's over story...)
Read it, it'll tug at your heartstrings. I can tell already that it's going to be one of my top favorites that I'll read again and again.
I'm actually surprised that the series concluded as recently as 2004,... the art and story feels like such an old-school classic! Also surprised it hasn't been made into an anime, it's perfectly suited for it.
You can read an extended review of volumes 1-5 here by swanjun.
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Date: 2009-12-23 05:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-12-23 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-24 05:43 am (UTC)or you can wait till I get them in the mail and borrow mine. <3
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Date: 2009-12-25 04:26 am (UTC)(And hell, if I go through that half as fast as I've gone through shoujo stuff in the past, I won't even need 4 days.)
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Date: 2009-12-25 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-24 01:18 am (UTC)And you better be finishing twelve kingdoms! =)
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Date: 2009-12-24 05:44 am (UTC)I'll finish it, don't worry! I should have watched it this week when I was waiting around actually. O_O
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Date: 2009-12-24 09:43 pm (UTC)