2 screenshot limit

There are times when I pick up a manga that I don’t know anything about, and later find myself wondering who in Big Manga Company headquarters decided that this series had to be licensed in the first place.

Sorry to start this post off sounding so negative. It’s not like I didn’t enjoy reading Gimmick! — there were a few parts that made me giggle — but it just doesn’t seem like the type of manga that already has a built-in fanbase, or barring that, it doesn’t seem like the type of manga that can attract new readers or fans.

Quick rundown: Gimmick! is the story of Shohei Nagase, a genius movie make-up artist/SFX expert.  In the tradition of the Japanese shonen hero, he’s sort of lazy, sort of a pervert, but all genius when it comes down to his special skill of… make-up.  He even has a special weapon tool to assist him, in the form of his Silver Spatula.

The first volume, even for somebody who’s usually generous with the praises as I am, is a bit of a hard sell. Nagase is good at what he does, and he tries to help distressed young maidens with his talent as much as possible and that’s it.  Most of the conflicts are solved within one chapter, with the bad guys getting their due from the plucky make-up guy.

Maybe I’m being too hard on this manga. After all, I’ve read dozens of other series that have followed this pattern and I didn’t hate those.  I’m certainly not in a rush to buy the next volume, though.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 11:45 am and is filed under manga & manhwa, viz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.