Review of "Nemesis: Who Me? Vol 1 Chapter 1" by Nemesis_Who_Me

Sanctinus's Rating: 3 of 5

    Nemesis: Who Me? starts off by introducing the main character.  Her personality is portrayed straight away through her abrupt language and her facial expressions.  While this is good for understanding the character, getting a view of her surroundings beyond a few feet of her would be beneficial to building the reader's image of the world.  It seems the time period is pre-industrialization, characterized by the clothing, the candles instead of lamps, and by the absence of motorized vehicles.  However, many panels show components of architecture (front door and door knob to the protagonist's home) and clothing that elude to the opening of the West and the Medieval era, which does flows about as rigidly with the rest of the setting as rubbing your finger against the grain on a wooden plank.  The language doesn't fit the time period, given the words and conjunctions used.

 

    The characters are generic.  The heroine (Minerva) is a classic social pariah, misunderstood, and isolating herself with her attitude.  She is irritable and abrupt.  The antagonist (Daphne) is a rich princess, in the literal meaning of the word princess, who shuns and harrasses the protagonist right from her first panel.  She is loud, bossy, and controlling.  Very few characters are introduced, and very little is truly given of the storyline.  Though everything is made extremely vague in the synopsis (ambiguity is only good to a point when introducing a story), it stays that way through the entire first chapter.  After finishing this pilot the reader now knows about as much as they did when they read the synopsis.


    The artwork is quite nice, clean, and full of expressions.  The characters are each very unique in their clothing, hair, and other physical characteristics.  The inanimate components of the manga are also very well drawn, with bold lines and elegant strokes of the pen.  Generally the use of tones is good, but in a few areas the tones seem to not fit the material.  The tone used for Minerva's shoulder armour appears to change with each page between pages 5 and 8.  The style is acceptible, however, the characters look a little too weak to be wielding anything heavier than a stick with a flag at the end.


    I would suggest building the storyline and picking one time period before continuing to a full volume of this manga.  Try to include more information of the land, its history, and the characters' histories (how they know each other).