3 out of 5

From American McGee!

I guess I just wasn’t really putting two and two together and I thought this was a comic from American McGee that maybe someone else was scripting.  No, it’s just Dark Horse doing another video game tie-in, which I’m sure are quality – and I give this 3 stars so it’s not un-quality, but… yeah.  Two and two.  Not expecting the obvious video game references like ‘choose your weapon’ and ‘let me just collect these karma crystals that this monster left behind’ (for real).

So this is McGee’s Little Red Riding Hood inspired tale: on an island where yokai seem to magically appear (those wacky Japanese spirits of every and anything), there are two tribes – one who worship the yokai and one who see them as creatures which may need to be killed if they pose a threat.  The former tribe owns the land and don’t like the latter tribe too much, but the latter tribe tries to keep the peace since they don’t want the world overrun with evil yokai.  Kani half belongs to the former (her mom – killed by yokai, dontcha know – married a wandering non-tribe ronin), but doesn’t quite see eye-to-eye with their traditions.  When a demon breaks into a yokai worshipping ceremony and the hunter tribe slaughters it, Kani offers to act as a liason between tribes to prevent a war.  This all goes down in pure movie/video game/tv setup logic, where it’s like – oh yeah, that’s totally the logical decision.

So maybe the comic will be about her learning the ways of the other tribe, dunno, ’cause I’m not gonna’ pick up the rest of the series.  But this issue ends with her on her way through a forest, wearing the ‘traditional red garb’ of the other tribe, and she gets waylaid by some demon tricksters or something to be continued.

So I’m a little snide because of the video game thing.  In truth, games have become a much more ingrained part of media, and we’re able to tell much richer stories with our games than we were able to years ago, so though moves like Defiance put a bad taste in my mouth, these types of game tie-ins might be a new level of media going forward.  Whatever.

And I would like to note – Akaneiro is interesting.  Justin Aclin mostly jams all the backstory into the book via VO narrative panels, but there wasn’t a feeling of information overload, which I’m sure was tempting to do.  Each page had a desirable balance of history, dialogue, and action, and I imagine that’s tough to do when there’s so much of a tale that’s not quite yours to fit in.  He also struck a believable balance with the feudal-era conversation, not making it too olden or sappy but also avoiding sounding too modern.  So the story structure is there – game nods aside – and you have a writer who’s willing to spread it out a bit.  The art is excellent.  It gets a little ga-ga eyes in spots, but Vasilis Lolos’ thick, expressive pencils (like a less choppy Becky Cloonan) and some amazing color work by Michael Atiyeh that really helps the flat backgrounds support the foreground all really helps to capture the essence of the characters – from the wild but nervous lead to her worrisome father to the youthful fighters and the awesome looking yokai – each page absolutely has something to look at.

But at the end of the day, it’s still an adaptation.  So it’s just… off.  I’m not too caring about any kind of drama in the book because it doesn’t seem like it can resolve anything.  However this ties into the game, it ties into the game, so there will be no dramatic changes or lesson learned.  Except that I should read taglines on comics a little closer before purchasing.