Review of "Elemental Gelade Vol 1"

Review Type: Manga & Anime
LostPhrack's Rating: 3 of 5

Elemental Gelade is an action oriented series that immediately attempts to hook the reader with fast paced explosive action sequences. The story starts out with Coud Van Giruet,  a member of the "Red Lynx" sky pirate crew, raiding a wealthy house hold for.. well, booty. Of course they end up with much more than they bargained for as Coud discovers a mysterious girl, Ren, sealed away in a dusty box. From their it's just about non-stop action as a group known as Arc Aile, an Edel Raid protection grou (think animal rights activists), attacks the Red Lynx crew in an attempt to take the mysterious girl from Coud and co.

During this initial confrontation Coud discovers that girl is no normal girl, but a member of a race called "Edel Raid", women implanted with stones that allow them to become powerful weapons of war. The ensuing clash destroy the Red Lynx and, oddly enough, sees Coud and Ren joining with the Arc Aile group to protect and help Ren find the mysterious Gelade Eden.

It sounds good, but sadly it's not. Personally I found Ren and Coud to be just.. bland and uninteresting. Neither character really grabbed my attention, which is not a good thing for your two lead characters. They're too cliched for my tastes. Ren's your typical quiet and mysterious girl, while Ren's your typical happy go lucky rogue with a heart of gold. Coud's entire reasoning for helping Ren is just odd as well. He wants to help her because.. he thinks it's his purpose?

On the other hand.. the Arc Aile are absolutely fantastic! They steal every scene they're in and have a great chemistry and are oozing charisma. I seriously dug them, in fact.. I wish they were the focus of the series since I found them way more interesting then either of the leads.

Despite the rather cliched beginning the basic concept has legs. The basic idea of the Edel Raid's, women who can become weapons and are generally wielded by men is very interesting. There's just so much that can be done with that in regards to gender relations, the way men use women as objects and more. Hopefully later volumes dig deeper into this, but the first volume was just all flash and lacked substance.

Artwise, it's not too bad. Mayumi Azuma's has some really nice character designs, which are highlighted thanks to the two page sketch book thingy at the end of the manga,  but I found the action sequences to be a bit hard to follow at times. Still, there's something very snazzy about Coud and his hook.

Overall it was ok. It didn't light me on fire or anything, but I really love the core concept and the Arc Aile characters are really enjoyable. Definitely has potential though.

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