C-blossom: Case 729

Let’s play Bamboozled! Question: Your father goes to prison for embezzlement. Do you; Use the money to take all your friends on vacation for old times sake therefore benefiting from this chance by falling in love? or Transfer yourself to an all girl school and learn that the same people that framed your father are out to capture you therefore you’re running for your life? Of course it’s the latter because this isn’t a romance. Actually my very poor effort at making it sound lighthearted is because this manga is a serious one. This one has secret agents, rats (not the nasty hairy rodents that carry diseases, thehuman ones that carry lies and deceit), and guns. “It’s exactly as planned.” Really? Then why are there many pages correcting your mistake? C-Blossom starts of with a dark and gloomy introduction. Through a few flashes of her past we immediately learn about Kana Matsumiya and what got her to that point in her life. It’s easy to understand why she became so serious and unfriendly. Unfortunately we only get a small glance into that personality for as soon as a new teacher appears in her school she opens up. Before you know it she is telling him her life’s story. There’s nothing wrong with it either she just needed someone to confide in, he just happened to be the one she chose. Her character leaves something to be desired and stumbles through her role. It’s technically not her fault since she has no idea what’s going on around her. Out of nowhere she finds that someone hired an assassin to kidnap her to use her as leverage in order to keep her father from speaking out in court. Now the life she wanted to disappear from is being taken away from her. She must choose, to fight or not to fight? Kana was kind of boring and even though her circumstances gave us an opportunity to like her, it was hard for me to really feel for her. Maybe it was because it was fast paced and had more to do with revealing the secret double agent and she was always running and being saved. She was pretty useless. Not one punch or kick, she was purely a damsel in distress. If anything the real prize was the unfolding of the hatred between the two main guys, Touya and Kisaragi, and their issues. The story might revolve and had started of with Kana but somehow it didn’t lack the development in getting to know Touya and Kisaragi. Which honestly are the focal point of this manga . The assassin and the one assigned to guard her, both trained together to protect but one took himself out of that race. That line also makes for great movie narration. The Embassy and it's associates including the embezzlement group was pictured rather believable and nothing super extravagant was done. It’s very unoriginal if you’re comparing to action movies. The bad guys look like bad guys, the good guys look like good guys. It’s mostly predictable and you can see what’s going to happen, either that or I have developed psychic abilities. Seeing as I haven’t won the lotto, I’d say that’s a negative. The art is average, seems to be a lot of that lately. There’s a lot of actions scenes and they make sense, by making sense I mean I easily see when the gun is being shot. It’s very clean and the characters are all different giving them a certain appeal to them. It's appealing but nothing magical. Overall, it’s an ok read and a fast one, but not one I’ll read over again. The story is good, characters are ok, some details aren’t always there or they seem fuzzy in the interpretation. Some don’t even get explanations. “Come with me if you want to live.” Oh jeez, yeah ok. You’ve been Bamboozled! I really need to stop watching Friends marathons...