First Date Review: Brave Story

Let me officially place everyone on notice that I'm revamping our review set-up a little bit. I will no longer only be doing First Date reviews for new shows each season; I will also be doing them on a lot of the manga and anime that I receive. You can think of them as sort of a "Quick Look," a bit more over-view than in-depth review-- which we'll also be having more of as time goes on. -g

Vital Statistics: Title: Brave Story Format: Novel Author: Miyuki Miyabe Original Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Release Info: Release Date: 11/17/09 US Publisher: VIZ Media Translator: Alexander O. Smith Length: 820 pages MSRP: $16.99

 
Disclosure: This review is based on a review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The Story

  Wataru Mitani is a middle schooler with a pretty normal life-- other than his remarkably strict parents, he goes to school, hangs out with his best friends, plays his favorite RPGs (the Saga series), and otherwise just gets on with things.

His life starts to go slightly awry when he starts investigating a ghost story at an abandoned building near his school, where he meets an unusual old man and eventually catches a glimpse of another world. Things go really wrong when one day his father makes a declaration that causes Wataru's world to fall apart at the seams.

Told that he can change his fate in the mysterious other world of magic and strange creatures, Wataru takes charge and sets out on an adventure.  

The Review

My absolute first impression when this one appeared in my mailbox: at 820 pages, this book is a whopper. That combined with being young-adult fantasy featuring a middle school-age hero will lead inevitably to comparisons with Harry Potter. For me, the comparison is pretty favorable so far-- I just finished part one, the shorter of what appears to be only two parts, so I thought it was a safe time to do a First Date, since it'll take me a while to finish the rest!

Wataru is absolutely an everykid. He's nervous about what his schoolmates think about him (especially the girls) and wants to please everyone. He has begun to perceive that his parents are overly strict in comparison to his friends', but he loves them dearly anyway. His father's betrayal is stunning and causes him to question everything about himself, his mother, his father, and their relationship-- he begins to start seeing them as real people, with flaws and desires, perhaps a bit earlier than strictly necessary. I am not a child of divorce myself, but I found the sections that revolve around Wataru's family troubles very compelling.

The first part of the book navigates easily between Wataru's school problems (he doesn't fit in), which lead to his ghost-hunting and other small quests, and his home problems, which lead him to a pretty desperate point in his young life. No detail is spared; at the end of the first part of the book you realize that it's entirely set-up for the rest of the novel and it still took 226 pages-- but you can't fault author Miyuki Miyabe for taking the time because it plants the hero, his personality and his goals, so firmly in your head.

And now, the aforementioned comparison with Harry Potter. While I liked Rowling's novels, I think it's important to note, as Wataru's fellow inter-world traveler Mitsuru does, that Vision is a world created entirely of their minds, not like the "real" world (or like Harry Potter's hidden-in-the-real-world version). As such, the monsters that Wataru will fight are entirely of his own creation, which is an important distinction, and what he's fighting FOR is also entirely for his own benefit. At least so far, this is no child-saving-the-world novel; it's all about a child trying to restore his own little world to rights as he sees them. However, in spite of that childishness, this world is imminently darker than the early Harry Potter books, or arguably even the later ones: adultery, family violence, the bitter way which adults manipulate each other are all on the periphery here, leaving Wataru straddling the fence between childhood and adulthood.

Brave Story was originally published as two light novels in Japan, both written and illustrated by Miyabe. The US edition-- which we would all do well to remember is aimed not at manga fans but at mainstream elementary and middle school readers --eschews Miyabe's internal illustrations entirely, and has illustrator Dan Hay do new cover art and a map of the fantasy world Vision for the inside cover. Hay's art is srong (it reminds me of Coraline-- the movie, not Dave Kean's cover --but I suspect it's largely the oddly button-like eyes on Wataru's face), but I do wish there was some way that Miyabe's original art could be made available as well. Maybe a little art book for the manga nerds who check out the novel, to be happily disregarded by the mainstream? Please?
 

The Conclusion

So far I've only dealt with the "real world" section of the book, so I can't speak much to the fantasy world of Vision that we're about to embark into with Wataru. That said, given the copious depths that Miyabe gives us to plumb, I'm feeling pretty confident that fans of YA literature will find a lot here to enjoy.

But you'll have to check back in later to see if I think Miyabe has delivered all that she's promised!