Twenty-four
Book Title: "Die Rosen von Versailles"
Author: Ryoko Ikeda
Page Count: ~1000
First Published: 1979
Summary: Manga about a girl born shortly before the French Revolution, raised as a boy to serve in the Queens guard.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh
So I keep trying to get into comics, mangas, graphic novels, whatever. Pictures with words in them. This wasn't a good try. I hated the sound effects (SCHLONK! PLOCK! BLAHBLAH!), they reminded me of the old Batman, and the story was far crueler than the anime (cartoon, it's a cartoon!) I watched as a child. There's rape, and dead bodies rotting away, and lots and lots of tragedy, and I didn't warm to any of the characters. And there's gender issues galore, Oscar, the heroine, is constantly torn between being a man and fight and stuff, and being a woman and love and stuff, as if the two were mutually exempt.
Also, all the characters looked alike. Oscar and her love-interest/friend André I could only tell apart because they dressed differently. In the cartoon, at least their haircolour is different. And while we're at that, it was really hard to see in which order the panels were to be read. It was just a mess on the page.
And then there's the issue of cost and value. One volume of this series of seven (which I borrowed from the library) costs 12 Euros. So for all seven, that's 84 Euros. I counted all seven as one book because that's what they were. They told one continuous story, and each took about half an hour to read (WITH looking at the pictures thoroughly). So what pleasure could be had from a simple novel for 6 Euros costs 84 in manga? That's just insane.