 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | VIZ MEDIA | | | ▪ | AUTHOR / ART: | | YASUHIRO KANO | | | ▪ | FORMAT: | | JAPANESE / B&W | | | ▪ | PAGES: | | 192 | | | ▪ | RATING: | | M | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 04/01/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 07/08/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | SCOTT CAMPBELL |
After he is disfigured in a school bus crash, teenage karate star Rando is saved by plastic surgery. Unfortunately, due to a horrible mix-up, he is given the face of Rina, the girl he has a crush on! Abandoned by his friends and parents, Rando is mistaken for Rina’s twin sister and adopted into her family. What’s a half-girl, half-crossdressing-guy to do? In volume five, certain discoveries relating to gender start to come to light in ways that no one wants to deal with (except for us readers that is!). "Yuna is really a guy!" is the phrase of the day. Natsuo has discovered Rando's secret, with no "bump on the head conveniently causes amnesia" plot devices in sight! Can Rando pretend to be a girl after his fake breasts fall off in front of the entire class? More importantly, can he ease Natsuo's feelings of betrayal? Is the ultimate taboo actually the ultimate turn-on? Then, the entire cast goes cosplaying and Rando's knitting skills prove to be lacking. Rando is then forced to go on a date with Dr. Manabe… could this actually get any weirder? The odd situations are reaching ridiculous levels in this volume, but that’s exactly what we want to see. This series has always been very funny, and it’s great to see it continue to take it father and crazier within volume five. The pages are getting more involved and more detailed you’ll find – the artist must be getting more comfortable with creating the world and characters of Pretty Face because they’re just really shining in this volume. There’s a lot more to look at, so the experience of the book should last longer. The art is really quite good – well-drawn, good shading and textures, and not too busy. The facial expressions really make it jump to that higher level of comedy – especially Rando’s. You’ll likely never see another manga/anime character have as many nosebleeds and bulging eyes as Rando does during his misadventures with the opposite sex (since he is a guy… sort of). The art is also quite dynamic, which is pretty cool for a comedy/slice of (weird) life manga. Lots of movement and speed lines are present within each page, really adding to the book’s ability to come alive and jump off the page. The details are impressive – a fine balance is present, as the art is great, but never overwhelming. That’s something that isn’t always easy to accomplish! As for reading the words and the flow of the story, it’s all very manageable. Some “side thoughts” of the character’s can be a bit hard to see as that kind of text is always made purposely smaller – but we won’t likely have too many senior citizens reading Pretty Face. Yasuhiro Kano (the very talented man behind this work and others) made his manga debut in 1992 with Black City, which won Weekly Shonen Jump's Hop Step Award for new artists. From 1993 to 2001, a novel series called MIDNIGHT MAGIC, written by Mugen and illustrated by Kano, was serialized in Japan's Jump Novel magazine. Kano also created a MIDNIGHT MAGIC manga based on the novel. Two collections of manga short stories by Kano have been released: BLACK CITY in 1996 and TOKYO ANTS in 2003. Kano's six-volume series PRETTY FACE appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2002 to 2003, and his newest series, M X 0, began running in WSJ in 2006. He’s quite a busy guy, and no wonder – he’s obviously got a talent for creating some very entertaining manga!
IN SUMMARY:
Pretty Face is drop dead funny, and those that read it have a hard time putting it down because the laughs barely let up. It’s just plain wrong… and fun!
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