Member Reviews
The story is intriguing and I love the artwork - it is very beautiful and some of the backgrounds are so intricate..
So very manga. In tone, in art style. In weirdness, to be frank. THere was plenty about the plot that I didn't initially understand but it did a pretty good job of self-explaining without becoming overly cumbersome.
Brightly coloured, well illustrated and action-filled this Manga title is definitely par for the course for this genre of material. A solid introduction which sets up the characters for the subsequent episodes. I would say to give this one a read if you enjoy, keep going, if not, try the next one. One of them is sure to fit your needs.
My 11 year old daughter loved this book! She is a huge fan of Manga and I am happy to allow her to read anything age appropriate, such as this. Highly recommend to all tweens who love graphic novels!
Goldfisch is a lot of fun, and while it’s definitely not meant for my demographic I still enjoyed it. Better yet, I loved it for its intended demographic of manga loving young adults. My teenage self would have adored this story and the characters, my grownup self feels happy shoving it into the hands of young readers because of the positive characters, the quirky humor, and excellent storytelling. Otta in the background gleefully flipping the bird at a baddie was perhaps the funniest part of this volume, I love it when writers and artists will use every aspect of their medium to deliver subtle storytelling and character development. I also enjoyed the notes from the creator and her assistant at the end which gave interesting insight into the development of the series.
My first reaction when seeing the opening pages was a good use of color. It colorful but not overpowering. And it is drawn well enough that the boy's expression is easily seen. The manga starts off with our main character and his dad and I just love it. Morrey Gibbs is amazing. He is able to breathe underwater and has the touch of Midas. He travels with his friend, and they are cool also, to break the curse he is under. His friends are a healer, otter, and a girl named Shelly. I won’t say anymore but it is a good manga and I recommend this book. It is a cute tale!
I want to thank Netgally and Tokyopop for giving me the chance to read an advance copy of this manga!
I thought this was going to be a fun manga with a cute art style and it was but also OHMYGOSH it was giving me so much nostalgia, like old time manga. It was lovely. I think the world is really interesting and I love that the characters have such strong goals and motives, it really helps move the story. It's funny and silly and so serious and painful at times. I'm really excited to see where this goes. If you like Dragon Ball I'd probably recommend this to you.
This is form an advance review copy for which i thank the publisher.
This I got thinking it looked interesting, but in the end it was truly a confusing read and contained nothing that entertained me. It's the kind of comic book which makes it clear that 'issue' has more than one meaning, and you do not want to be publishing an issue which has issues! The story is about Morrey Gibbs who is effectively King Midas. Almost everything he touches turns to gold, but there seems to be no rule as to how and when it happens. Why he has this power remained a mystery to me throughout the graphic novel.
On top of this, the story is set in Waterworld, but thankfully without Kevin Costner. Morrey has a pet otter which immediately turned me off the story. I detest stories of any stripe that feature oh-so-cute animal sidekicks, because it is way overdone. I much prefer writers who take the road less traveled, but this author evidently has absolutely no idea where that road is.
On top of that, there's the stock inventor friend, and at that point I gave up. I honestly cannot tell you what the story is about because I have no idea despite gamely plowing through to the end. It was that confusing. Morrey is apparently trying to avoid bounty hunters, but since he can create all the gold he wants out of literally anything, he could have bought off those guys (or conversely, turned them into god), and also the guy who hired them. In fact, he could have flooded the world with so much gold that it made gold literally worthless, but he was evidently too stupid to figure any of that out. Stupid main characters are ten-a-penny, especially in young adult novels. The world does not need them appearing in graphic novels, too. So the book was simply a mess and I cannot recommend it.
On a technical note, it's increasingly clear to me that comic book authors have not yet clued-in to the fact that books are published electronically and the book had better work on a pad. Instead, both they and publishers are still evidently unable to think outside the box: the cardboard box in which print issues are snail-mailed. They're landlocked in a print world, and if that's the case, they should quit trying to publish electronic versions and send the reviewers a print version.
This story was rendered even more irritating than it already was by two problems. The first of these was that the screen image was significantly smaller than my iPad screen, and the text illegible until I'd enlarged it, but once enlarged, Bluefire Reader (my reader of choice for ebooks, since Amazon's crappy Kindle app truly sucks, and virtually no one offers review books in B&N's much better Nook app), would not let me swipe the page until I had reduced it back to it's original tiny size! This was irritating at best. Publishers really need to take the time to smell what they're shoveling out to people.
A second problem was that some pages, for reasons unknown at least as judged by their actual content, were 'printed' at ninety degrees to upright, and the since pads are programmed to re-orient instantly when they're turned, the image merely shrank when the pad was turned to read it unless I took pains to keep it completely flat. Yes, you can lock the image, but his can create other problems so i typically do not do this except with Amazon's truly crappy Kindle app, which is useless for reading anything other than plain text anyway. This re-orientation once again made the images too small! Frustrating at best.
So, a note to authors and publishers: if you're going to offer your graphic novel in electronic format, give some thought to how it's created and what it will look like in the intended reading environment for the sake of your readers - if you want to keep them reading your work, that is. But disregarding the technical issues, I can't recommend this based on the poorly put-together content.
This first volume of "Goldfish" is lots of fun. It nicely introduces the characters, the world and the basic plot of the story. Morrey is an interesting character (even if he is a little bit over-the-top, his personality fits perfectly with this kind of manga) and the rest of characters are nicely introduced and developed. It has some nice humor (of the silly kind) and an easy to relate to purpose for our hero. Good job.
The graphic style is, as it can be easily seen from the cover, manga. It is nicely drawn and it has a high quality level. There's been detail put into bringing the world to live in the drawings, and it brings the reader perfectly to the world of the story. The characters are very expressive and their feelings are easy to understand. The onomatopoeia and the graphic humor are also quite good.
While this book's bright and bubbly appearance and first couple chapters suggest that it would be appropriate for a middle-grade audience, it soon becomes clear that this fast-paced tale, which seems to be a combination of Dragon Ball, Fullmetal Alchemist, and One Piece might be a bit darker and heavier than first supposed. The story is simple: a treasure-hunting girl meets a young fisherman boy with the power to turn anything he touches into gold. And just like the tales of King Midas, that touch comes with a terrible cost. Shonen fans will find plenty to enjoy, including a fast-paced story, plenty of action, lovable characters, and beautiful artwork. However, readers looking for a more original story might be disappointed.
I loved this cute manga, which really surprised me. I admit that my love for manga in general has been more recent but this is a great one for kids (only mild swearing extremely sparsely [I only remember once]). I also have a love of twisted fairy tales and legends so this was definitely right up my alley. The artwork was really well done and the story and characters were charming. I'll be looking for more of this series and you should too.
I would like to thank the publisher, author, and Netgalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
'Goldfisch Volume 1 Manga' by Nana Yaa is a fun story about an odd young boy with odd abilities. It feels like there are too many story elements going on here, but I enjoyed reading it.
Morrey Gibbs is a young fisher-boy who lives in a world of mutant animals called "anomals" for some reason. He's got the ability to breathe underwater, and he also has the Midas touch. He'd like to lose the Midas touch, since it's turned out to be a curse on his life. Together with his friends, an otter, a healer, and an inventor named Shelly, they are looking for a way to break Morrey's curse.
The book starts with a framing story, but never goes back to it. Morrey is called Goldfisch, but we haven't learned why yet. Other than that, the book is a fun story with strange creatures and mixed mythologies. I wouldn't mind reading more of these characters.
I received a review copy of this manga from Tokyopop, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this manga.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.
An adventure manga-styled comic about a boy with Midas Touch. Yes, this kid can turn anything to gold (well, except himself it seems, but everything else is fair game). How he got that way? Well, you will find out in this volume, along with lots of adventures, fun, chases, and dangers!
I am not too sure how I felt about Morrey. At times he seemed like a good kid, but a lot of times I was shaking my head at his stupidity. Oh hey, here is a golden apple... what did you think would happen then? That people would just keep mum? Hahahahaha. :P He is quite the typical hero you see in Shounen Manga. Strong, powerful, but a gigantic idiot as well.
I was already wondering how Morrey dressed himself, but it seems he has help from his Otta. Which had me in stitches, that little dude is a pro in dressing Morrey.
At first we see how Morrey met Shelly, and then later someone else as well, then we quickly get a flashback to how he has gotten his golden touch and what happened to his brother. After that is time to figure out how to save Morrey's brother, and much more. Yep, you will never be able to look away while reading this one. It was definitely a fun ride. Plus I love the world these characters live in, and I wonder how the water got to be so polluted.
So I am giving a few less points due to how, I am guessing, Netgalley formatted the comic. Double pages are flipped, which meant more than a few times I had to turn my head around to read the pages. Not to mention that the text was already itty bitty at times, but became even itty bittier on those pages. :|
Also it was quite annoying that while this book was read in the normal Western way (left to right) the text/the comics itself were read as manga are read. Since I never saw this one as a manga, plus added that you read this one as one would do a normal book, so from left to right, I kept mistakenly read it the wrong way a lot of times. :|
The art style was really cute and fun, it really reminds me of shounen manga.
All in all, this was a pretty fun first volume, and I am quite excited to read the next volume of this comic, especially given the ending! ARggh, cliffhanger!