Laon

Laon is an interesting manga. The characters are pretty solid. The story starts out pretty good as well, though it tends to flounder at the end. Honestly, I enjoyed this manga a lot until the last volume. It kind of killed the slow build up and steady plot development. If they had just stretched it out another volume or two I really believe this could have been a great manga. It had some unexpected events happen at the end, though the final ending was a bit unsatisfying. On a sidenote, I find the artwork neat and unique, which was a big part of why I purchased this manga. I think this would almost translate better as an anime, where the story can be a bit more spread and the intricate designs can be in vivid color where they can truly be appreciated. All in all, it was a good read with a bumpy ending that could use some smoothing out.

What can I say about this series. When I first started reading this series I thought it was amazing. It had interesting characters as well as theme, and made me laugh out loud on several occasions. The story was still doing great in my opinion, until the last 2 volumes of the manga (5 &6). The story took a turn and all of a sudden became really rushed like the author wanted to get done with the series ASAP. Random characters came out of no where, and became like important parts of the story, but the author gave little to no background on them. They were just thrust into the plot to have some role which helped lead to the end of the series, but it was just kind of sudden for me. The ending was not what I had expected and while it gave the answer to some of the questions, most of the answers made you think "What the heck?". It just didn't make any sense at all to me. I don't know if it was because of me reading 1-4 a few months ago & then reading 5 & 6, or what. The ending also just made the whole thing sort of silly, and everything that happened sort of worthless effort.


Art: Beautiful! I like the outfits, and the art style. I also enjoy the fact that all the characters look pretty different, and aren't just the same face with a different hair style slapped on.

Character: I felt the author made the personalities of each beginning/main character pretty known, and you got a good feel of who they were and how they acted. (Not so much for the later characters though)


OVERALL, I'd give this series a 6.5. It would have been a 9 for me, if not for the last two volumes dragging it down from it's throne of glory.