A review of Reluctant Soldier Princess Nami |
| First Published: 2001 |
| Format: Webcomic. |
| Number of pages: 6 |
| Age Rating: PG |
| Price: Free! |
| Availability: Read for free at the Sweatdrop Studios website. |
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Introduction Reluctant Solider Princess Nami is a teenager like so many others. A lazy collage bum who lounges in her room smoking cigarettes and playing computer games all day. I've been there and done that so I can appreciate the humour of this.Ah those were the days... Magical girls are usually pretty, helpful, teachers pets, and nice well brought up, healthy girls that you could take home to meet your granny. Not Nami. Anyway typical sloppy teenager, sat with fag in gob playing games. Mum comes in and makes her tidy up her pit. Then in the trash she discovers some creepy talking cat thing which she sparks clean out on the floor. Later it explains to her the terrible situation the world is in from this evil being named Zurlina. This issue is short, very short in fact being only 6 pages long, so the story doesn't unfold much in that space. But for those 6 pages it's pretty funny. It certainly amused me. I can't wait for the big volume.
Art & Design This Isn't the finest comic Laura Watton has produced art-wise. Originally it was designed as a one shot comic for a convention, and as such is very much like an ashcom in terms of art quality. It's certainly not up to the standard of Biomecha, but it's still a complete comic. It may be rough, but it has all the elements a manga should; varied line art, background management, and screen tone.But despite the roughness it's not going to make you go yuck! If anything it just blends in the sloppy studentness and makes it seem more real. The standard though seems to improve from page to page, the first page is the roughest of all, but by page 6, frame borders are straight, line art is neater, and characters are shaded nicely. All the text and dialogue is written by hand, and is fairly easy to follow. The frame layout themselves are pretty easy to follow too. Overall I think Laura was just playing when she made this comic, but took it more seriously later, since this story is a series now. Its artistic shortcomings aren't that bad and things get better as Laura decides to take the story further. Nami is funny though, she ain't your average magical girl. She's no Card Captor Sakura or Sailor Moon that's for sure. She'd eat them alive, or choke them to death on the fag smoke.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF SWEATDROP STUDIOS, & LAURA WATTON. Review by Wayne Hallows |
