Victoria's Electric Coffin 01

[cornerofmadness]

Victoria's Electric Coffin 01 by Ikuno Tajima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a riff on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein of course. For me it was a solid 3.5 but I rounded down mostly due to the age of Victoria Frankenstein set against the alt history of Victorian era New York. Women had so little agency and she's barely a teenager with all this power. On one hand it's cool to see that, on the other it's hard to swallow.

David Douglas is a young boy in the NYC slums who gets sent to death row on trumped up charges and after he's put to death Victoria brings him back as Eins. Now, he bears much more resemblance to the book's monster than the movies as he's sentient and now relatively loyal to Victoria who has given him a 'second chance' at life (even if he basically has to be plugged in at night). She wants him to do good in this world but most don't want to see that happen, especially the police who still see him as David the killer.

Victoria has competition in the whole bringing the dead to life arena. That includes another ridiculously young prodigy.

The art is nice, the story isn't bad. I do hope that soonish we'll have them look into the murder that David was supposed to have committed. I am going to read on for now



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Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari Vol. 1

[cornerofmadness]

Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari Vol. 1 by Onigunsou

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is an interesting take on a well-used trope, exorcists and spirits, in this case called tsukumogami. Hyoma has good reasons to hate the spirits to the point his grandfather fears what Hyoma might become so he sends his grandson to Botan, a young woman who lives with multiple highly protective tsukumogami.

This goes as well as one could expect. Botan struggles to break through Hyoma's prejudices before he's hurt by them or by her tsukumogami or by others who would seek to hurt them both (which is what Hyoma expects of all spirits. He sees them as purely destructive forces).

Botan learns Hyoma isn't moved merely out of hatred. He has a deep desire to protect and her own tsukumogami want to nurture that as Hyoma isn't exactly wrong. A lot of spirits are dangerous.

The art in this is very nice and I'm curious as to where it's going.



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