Castle of Dreams Manga Review

The first half of this super-sized volume, originally released in Japan as “Castle of Dreams,” is a loosely-connected series of three one-shots.  Each has a fantasy theme, but their main connection is a sorcerer who appears as a deus ex machina and grants a character a single wish.  Other than that, the stories vary widely.  The first is about a girl who lives in the forest, but is taken to be the concubine of a widower prince and falls in love with him, while the last is about the son of a lord and a peasant trying to take revenge on the lord’s heir.  My favorite of these first three, “I am the Mermaid,” focuses on the young priestess of an island whose life is forever changed when a handsome foreigner washes up on the shore.  Each of the stories has its own strengths and weaknesses, but I found the flat characters to be the biggest problem.  When Tsuda focuses more on the story than the characters, such as in “I am the Mermaid,” the results are lovely.  But she can’t quite capture the desperation of a lovelorn young woman in “In the Forest,” nor the brotherly dedication of “Castle of Dreams.”

It is interesting, then, that the next half of the volume begins with my favorite characters of the bunch.  “The Room Where an Angel Lives” is about a young boy who works in the coal mines, and whose life is miraculously changed when he finds a young, orphaned girl who looks like an angel.  It’s also here that Tsuda’s love of time jumps is most obvious; she often tries to close out a story by giving a very brief description of what happens in the future.  In some cases, such as the high school romance “Because I Have You,” it works very well, and the glimpse into the future brings a nice conclusion to the story.  In others, such as the final pages of “The Room Where an Angel Lives” and “Castle of Dreams,” it actually lessens the impact of the conclusion by giving us too much information about what happens.  When an author has fifty or sixty pages to tell a story, there just isn’t enough room for that.

The other two stories in the second half are both about high school relationships.  “Awkward Relationship” features a pair of childhood friends whose lives have taken different paths, and is a cute, relaxed story that contrasts with the drama found in the rest of the book.  “I Won’t Go” gives a prime example of that drama with a love triangle based around a girl who is separated from her boyfriend and the new boy she finds herself attracted to.  The ending for that one is surprisingly mature, and, with “Awkward Relationship,” is one of the most open-ended stories of the bunch.

One-shot anthologies are common in Japan but rarely make the crossing to America.  So as a fan of this type of storytelling, I’m always pleased to see a release like Castle of Dreams.  Sure, some of the stories are hit-or-miss, but fans of shoujo fantasy or high school romance should be able to find something in here that they like, and fans of Kare Kano might be interested to see the author’s earlier works.  Mostly, though, I’d say this is a must-buy for those who are fans of anthologies–there aren’t many of these releases out there, and the sheer size of this volume combined with the quality of (some of) the stories makes it easy to recommend.