Ranked #188

Historie (Manga)

Alright, let's make Historie.
Haha. Oh, wow, bad pun.

STORY:
If your a true fan of historical manga, then you'll most likely enjoy this for it's content. Especially if your into ancient greek/persian history. The story at the beginning lacks a little something that I like to call complexity, and it continues on that way until some things happen that cause Eumenes to leave his hometown.

ART:
As with all of Iwaaki's work, there will be some that find the art a little plain or too sketchy for them. This is definitely not art that would be pleasing to those who are fans of shiny, glittering bishonens from a hardcore shoujo manga. This art really makes you feel like you can see the soul of a character just by looking through their eyes.

CHARACTER:
Speaking of seeing a characters' soul through their eyes, I'm pretty sure Eumenes (especially young Eumenes) has no soul to should through his eyes. He is the only character that you can't really feel any emotion other than an indifferent bliss radiating from them. He's more of a cold and calculating scholar for most of the series, even when he learns potentially traumatizing stuff. I suppose due to the nature of his race, that's how he is supposed to be though. But some of the other characters, woah. You can tell right away whether they are kind-hearted or filled with malice.

ENJOYMENT:
Any fan of Historical or even Seinen manga will undoubtedly enjoy this. It's simplistic, but thoroughly enjoyable. It draws on in with something that I can't quite put my foot on, maybe it's the little quirks of humor that are thrown into the story while not taking away from the seriousness.

OVERALL:
Admittedly, there's not a whole lot of action. Just a fight here and there, then one pretty epic battle, but again not too many fights. So if your a real hardcore fan of action manga, then that might put you off. If your a fan of highly detailed art, then Historie's art, again, might put you off. Other than those two downfalls, there's really not too much else that's all too bad about it. read more

There were only two reviews of this manga, and thus I decided to give my own review. Remember, this review may contain spoilers.

Historie's setup is the same as the popular seinen manga Berserk. We start out with a future view of the main character. Then it goes into a flashback mode, to see what has all led up to that point.

The story of Historie follows Greek/Macedonian/Persian history. Though this should not be viewed as educative, since not all history aspects of this manga are correct. It stays fiction after all.

We start out with Eumenes, a scythian boy who grew up alongside Greeks, even believing he was a greek himself. Eumenes constantly has weird dreams about a woman with great swordmanship. After some shocking events with a scythian slave, he hears the truth from the potential killer of his ''father''. He hears he was a scythian boy all along, and thats when everything changed.

He is sold as a slave, and makes many encounters with new people, eventually becoming acquinted with Macedonia.

The art is nowhere near special or shocking. The art is good, and the background often stays clean, to emphasize the characters facial expressions. The character designs are well-done, and just from expressions you can see what the character is feeling.

The characters in this story are well developed, though some seem a bit shallow, the important characters shine through with realistic emotions and such. The protagonist Eumenes really shines through, and is considered a ''natural genious'.

If you like historic manga, you will lvoe this title. The characters are likeable, the story is good so far and the historic aspect of this manga is often correct. ( Characters mentioned, events that occur etc).

However, don't go looking for this manga expecting a epic highly-detailed story about the wars of Macedonia. You should read it for its story, and the character development.


---Note: This is a ongoing manga, my score is only for now. I will edit and/or change my entire review if my opinion changes.

-- Please give me feedback, this is my first review on MaL if you disagree on some points, or think I should elaborate on some points please do mention this.


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