Runa and company set out for adventure in search of a powerful jewel.
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Miyoko Ikeda and Michiyo Kikuta
Translation: Joshua Weeks
What They Say
Runa bids farewell to her childhood friends and sets off on a quest to find the Jewel of Everlasting Time. Together with Mokke and Suneri, she travels to a beautiful port town – and finds herself in the middle of an ancient legend involving a magic crystal ball and merfolk!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
In the first chapter of the volume, we find Runa learning that she must go out and search for the Jewel of Everlasting time, lest it falls into the hands of an evil fairy. After saying her goodbyes to her childhood friends she somberly sets off with Mokke and Suneri at her side.
When we next rejoin them, we find them in a port town listening to a beautiful singer by the name of Shizuku. However, the young woman’s performance is cut short by a young girl with a water pistol accusing her of being a witch. Runa soon finds herself caught up in the affairs of this young girl, Yui, who believes that Shizuku is trying to steal away her older brother, Ryo. Having befriended Runa, Yui takes her to a shop in which an old man keeps a “magic crystal ball” which supposedly grants wishes. When she later returns to the shop to ask the man more about the ball, she finds that Tai has already stolen it, and is defeated by him in combat.
Over the rest of the volume, we see Yui begin to open up to those around her, and learn that Shizuku is, in fact, a mermaid. However, this soon causes a bit of an issue, as the crystal ball turns out to be an artifact belonging to the merfolk, and an object that Shizuku needs in order to continue living with Ryo. Unfortunately, Tai learns of this and uses it to manipulate Shizuku, who in turn kidnaps Mokke and Suneri, setting the stage for a grand conflict between Runa and the desperate mermaid.
In Summary:
With this volume, we can see something of a formula arising, with Runa beginning her journey in search of the Jewel of Everlasting time. Unfortunately, this seems to wash the series clean of most of the characters introduced in the first volume, boiling the key cast of characters to simply Runa and her two traveling companions. Fortunately, what is here does seem to work, setting up a fairly interesting conflict between Runa and enemy who isn’t simply an evil presence, as in the first volume. Hopefully, the author can continue to roll with this formula and create a wide variety of interesting settings and characters to occupy them, because there certainly is a good bit of potential presented in this volume.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Del Rey Manga
Release Date: October 26th, 2010
MSRP: $10.99