King of Cards 1 by Makoto TATENO
Makoto Tateno is better known in the English-language manga community for her BL manga titles like Hero Heel and Yellow. I was aware that she had also done a couple of regular shoujo titles, so I don’t know why this particular title escaped my radar.
King of Cards follows Manami Minami, a girl who starts playing a trade card game called CHAOS, mostly out of the prodding of her cousin, who’s the head of the school’s gaming club. She buys her first card set, and has the (un)fortunate luck to find the rarest card possible in the entire game, Sahgan the Mighty Sorcerer. Other players find out about this, and Manami now has to fend off all the possible challengers who come seek her out with the sole intention of winning Sahgan for themselves.
I know very little about Yu-Gi-Oh except the basic premise that it’s a shonen manga about a boy who wants to be the best at playing a trading card game. I read over the other manga reviews that wrote up King of Cards and the overall consensus is that this title is the “shoujo version of Yu-Gi-Oh.” I think that’s a little bit unfair to King of Cards, since I think, at the heart of it all, it’s a shoujo manga through and through.
How so? For instance, as soon as Manami obtains the Sahgan card, she suddenly starts having premonition dreams of Sahgan. We find out in the progress of the volume that Sahgan is giving her hints on how she can win her next match. Manami, as the other characters even realize, is not a good card player — but because she has a deep emotional connection with her cards, fortune smiles down on her and leads her on the path to victory. If that isn’t deep shoujo territory, then I don’t know what is.
Even if you’re not remotely interested in trading card games, Tateno puts on a cute spin on it here. And her art is so nice that you may not mind the somewhat predictable outcomes of each of Manami’s matches. I’d really want to check out the rest of the series and see where this goes.
May 25th, 2009 at 10:05 am
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May 26th, 2009 at 8:57 am
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