By Yuki Amemiya and Yukino Ichihara
Go Comi!, 200 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

07-Ghost follows a young boy named Teito, who was once a slave but is now an up-and-coming student in the Barsburg Military Academy. He’s a skilled user of the magical art known as Zaiphon and is highly favored by a high ranking military official. Though his future is looking bright at first, things quickly go horribly wrong. Not long after passing an important test, he overhears the plans of a mysterious officer named Ayanami and suddenly a past he had all but forgotten comes flooding back to him in fractured and broken bits. In short order, Teito begins to uncover the truth of his origins and in the process, finds himself caught in the middle of a battle between two warring nations and two supernatural forces.

The story for 07-Ghost feels a bit rocky to me. There’s a whole lot going on in the first volume and at several times I found myself getting lost in the various histories, factions, groups, and mysterious pasts. On the upside, the confusion does mirror Teito’s own confusion at the flurry of events. More often than not, however, I found this gambit off-puting rather than engaging.

It seems that Teito is some kind of lost heir to a rival of Barsburg, raised by a priest, forced into slavery and then the military–which has plans of its own for him. This all somehow ties into ties into a myth about seven gods of death and a fallen angel. The character of Teito himself mirrors the confusion of the story. One moment he’s a cool and collected young officer, the next he’s on the run, spazzing out and being incredibly unreasonable about every little thing. I didn’t find the supporting cast a whole lot better. For the most part it seemed populated by typical shonen stock characters: a pervy but ultimately nice guy, a quiet intelligent one with glasses, an ever-loyal friend willing to go to the mat for his buddy, etc. Tangled and bland.

The art’s not really my thing, either. Everyone’s incredibly pretty, there’s lots of toning used to give things that sparkly, emotional feel which ended up reminding me of some of the shojo books I’ve flipped through from time to time. The layouts were a bit confusing at times as well, with several instances of panel-less images bleeding over several other panels and leaving me scratching my head as to where they fit into the flow of things. There’s also a few odd uses of forced perspective as well. It can be a great dramatic tool, but generally isn’t the kind of thing I’d expect to see used for comedic, “You need a bath, come with me” panels. I also found the few fight sequences a bit awkward and difficult to follow at times, particularly the scene between several priests and a demon. I’m still not sure exactly what took place. Actually, while I’m on the subject of artwork and character designs, I just want to mention that the scythe on the cover is the most impractical weapon ever. It’s virtually a half circle with the tip nearly reconnecting with the handle. Since the blade is on the inside this makes it utterly useless as a weapon unless the wielder has plans to use it as some kind of sadistic hoola-hoop. Thankfully when it turns up in the actual manga itself it’s not nearly as curved.

Overall, I wasn’t really blown away by the book, but it was the creative team’s first published work and there is some interesting bits and pieces tossed in. It just feels like they threw everything they thought was a cool idea into the book and hoped it would all work out.

Volume one of 07-Ghost is available now.