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The Moonlight That Surrounds Me 1 (Japanese) by Saki Hiwatari: C

January 5, 2008 by Michelle Smith 2 Comments

From the back cover:
Rin and Alice have brought closure to their past lives and are living happily. Their son, Ren, is a completely normal boy. One day, his guardian angels appear to him. But what is their true form!? And what is the power closed inside Ren!? Inherited thoughts and abilities… The first volume of the long-awaited Please Save My Earth second-generation series has arrived!

Review:
Alas, this is not very good. I didn’t expect much, but reckoned for something better than this.

Ren is likeable (and kind of goofy), but because he couldn’t resist bragging about his parents’ powers at school, everyone there thinks he’s a liar. His only friend is Kachiko, daughter of ESPer Mikuro. In the first of three stories, the spirits of Shion and Mokuren protect him from a villain practically straight out of Sailor Moon.

In the second story, Kachiko and her tiresome angst about her father spending time at his ESP research job in America take center stage. It grows worse when Shion gets involved and imbues Ren with powers so he can go harrass Mikuro for making Kachiko sad. I feel like Shion’s dignity has been sullied.

In the last story, Rin has no memory of promising his son to tell him about Shion and Mokuren, so everyone worries about him acting strangely. Turns out, Shion has been “hijacking his consciousness” because he wanted to interact with Ren.

Also, Shion and Mokuren can now apparently appear in the physical realm to those with ESP ability. The only scrap of explanation given for why they never did this in the first series (that I recall, at any rate) is a lack of motivation. Uh-huh. Shion was pretty motivated to get those passwords.

Lastly, Hiwatari’s artistic style has changed a great deal and I don’t like it as well. Jinpachi looks absolutely nothing like the character did in the original. I realize they’ve grown up, but the rest are still recognizable, even if it did take me a couple of seconds to realize who Shion was upon his first appearance.

I doubt I’ll be continuing with this series. Hiwatari herself admitted she doesn’t know where things are headed. The only truly interesting parts to me were the moments where Alice and Rin were alone together, or when it became clear that Haruhiko still has feelings for Alice, and even those weren’t enough to quell the notion that maybe I should’ve just let the original stand on its own.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi, Shoujo Tagged With: Saki Hiwatari

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Melinda Beasi says

    February 17, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    Well that sounds disappointing.

    Reply
  2. Michelle says

    February 17, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    It would take several people telling me it gets better to convince me to revisit it, honestly.

    Reply

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