Because Alita was destined to die when Doctor Akamashi tried a coup d’etat, the world has begun to change. The evil within people has begun to take over turning them into monsters. Prince Kite (Kaito in fan-translations) has also become corrupted and intends to use the power of Theoria to recreate the world.
The story isn’t actually that different from the anime. As some of you probably know, Dengeki Teioh, the magazine where Murder Princess was serialized in, was discontinued in last winter. While some series moved to other MediaWorks’s magazines, Murder Princess ended with Dengeki Teioh. For a while the manga looked really promising and it seemed like it could turn into something interesting, but the last chapter pretty much screwed everything up. I’m not blaming the artist, it must be really difficult to be suddenly told that you have to finish everything in one chapter. Well, the manga still has better ending than the anime.
One of the reasons why I’m not reading Rozen Maiden, though I loved the animes, is because I heard Peach-Pit and Birz Comics had some disagreement and Rozen Maiden was canceled. For mangas that are read for their story and are actually going to end, it’s important to have good ending or else everything before has no meaning. Spending lots of money to buy a pile of mangas and find out the ending is incomplete and hurried is really disappointing, which is the reason I rather not read such series at all.
Now, should I recommend the fans of the first volume, or action mangas in general, to read the second volume of Murder Princess or just avoid it and pretend it never existed? If anything, Murder Princess had a lot of potential, but what good is potential if it gets wasted like this? The art is good, the scenario is interesting and the action is pretty good. I definitely would’ve liked to read more Murder Princess and the sudden end was really disappointing. I wish Sekihiko Inui would continue drawing it or re-tell the ending. The anime tried that but failed horribly.
Murder Princess the manga has lots of qualities, but if you’re going to pick up both volumes, prepare to be very disappointed with the ending. If you can’t bear disappointing ending, you probably should just forget all about this manga.
October 23, 2007 at 9:51 am
[...] Otaku no Ken posted a review of Murder Princess vol 2. [...]
August 5, 2008 at 7:00 am
Nice review; I too thought Murder Princess was kickass and felt let down by the ending (though I understand the circumstances).
Anyway, I don’t think you should be quite so hard on Rozen Maiden. True, Comic Birz did cancel it; true, volume 8 is generally lackluster; but the story is definitely not over yet. Peach-Pit signed on with a different magazine to publish a second series, taking place a year later. Hopefully it gets licensed and translated by one of the really good publishers (Broccoli Books and a couple others); hell, if VIZ gets it, I might make an exception for my vendetta against them.
August 5, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Now that it has been confirmed that Rozen Maiden will be continued, I’m planning to get all the books translated so far. The reason I didn’t do this before, like I said in the post, is because I don’t usually like mangas that have incomplete endings, no matter how good they’ve been prior to that ending. But now that I don’t have to worry about Rozen Maiden ending too soon, I’m definitely going to start reading it.
For example, had I known how Kamiyadori ends, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to buy all the books just to find out the ending is nowhere near complete. Well, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have bought Murder Princess vol. 2 either, if I had been told how it ends before I bought it. That’s just me, though. Murder Princess still has excellent artwork and cool action scenes. For some that may be enough, but I would’ve liked to see a better conclusion instead. Knowing the circumstances I’d say the end was decent and I’m not blaming the artist for bad end, but cancelling of Dengeki Teioh which caused all of this.