By Huang Jin Zhou & Hiromu Arakawa
Yen Press, 176 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

Set in a feudal Chinese-esque era, Hero Tales stars Taitou Shirei, a headstrong and reckless young man who loves his village and seems to love defending it even more. All is going swimmingly until one day a young traveling monk, by the name of Ryuukou Mouten, appears to help Taitou complete his coming-of-age ceremony. Taitou is defeated by Ryuukou, as is the custom (a young person must be defeated by an older) and receives an ancient sword said to be only usable by someone with enough “strength” to wield it. Another mysterious man, named Shimei, shows up and reveals the main plot point: there are seven stars in the sky that throughout history have bestowed themselves onto seven heroes. Two of these stars are at constant odds with each other and Hagun is one of them. This explanation and some torture causes Taitou to release his “star self” and get his sword stolen; propelling him to journey forth to find the sword, with Ryuukou and his (Taitou’s) sister, Laila, alongside him.

While it sounds like an interesting concept (I had flashbacks of Saint Seiya and Saiyuki), I found it to be poorly executed, with the setting and characters fleshed out in no way at all. For instance, what is the significance of the coming-of-age ceremony? Other than being a plot device for Taitou to receive the sword, we don’t know anything about it or how it plays into the rest of the world. Much of the world is like this, drawing from traditional Chinese folklore but not making the effort to establish the relationships between the empire and its common people. Maybe it’s just me but I like wordy explanations and comprehensive chapters, even if it takes an entire volume to establish really interesting story, setting and characters.

Characters are in a similar vein. No one’s pasts are explained but referenced, expecting readers to understand the setting. Taitou, Ryuukou and Laila are very generalized character roles: Ryuukou is straight-laced, Taitou is headstrong and doesn’t think before he acts. There are certain instances where they show realistic human emotion (there’s a touching scene where Ryuukou and Taitou establish their friendship after saving refugees from flooding, as well as Taitou’s obvious concern for his sister in the first chapter.) For the most part, however, these stereotypes that they, and many other characters introduced later on the series, been assigned get old fast.

Aside from the flaws in the writing, artistically, this book was a winner. Those of you who are readers of Fullmetal Alchemist know Hiromu Arakawa’s artwork. She is a wonderful illustrator, inker and character designer and I think that Hero Tales really puts her artwork on a different level than Fullmetal has. She has amazingly captured a very rustic and imperial feel that you get from traditional Chinese architecture, giving this less-than-substantial plot a nice setting. This would be my number one reason for checking this book out.

Altogether, I was not exactly pleased with Hero Tales. I myself was tricked into thinking it’d be another Fullmetal just by seeing Arakawa’s name on the cover. After further investigation, though, I found that this tale took seven years to conceptualize and create, which makes me wonder about how sidetracked Hiromu and Huang Jin Zhou (a collective mind of Hiromu Arakawa, Genco and Studio Flag) got. I will admit, however, that there are interesting things that are alluded to at the end and caught my attention, so maybe future volumes will fill in some of the gaps.

Volume one of Hero Tales is available now.

Review copy provided by the publisher.