234jellyfish’s Weblog

I’ve never been a big fan of manga/anime. The only thing I’ve ever become obsessed with was simply just Sailor Moon. Which every little girl at some time or another loved during the 90’s. So that doesn’t count. Especially since I never read the manga.

But I’ve recently discovered the enchanting and wonderful stories in which manga holds. Last few weeks were a time of having my nose to these little books speeding through the storyline and being so sad when the story seems to end on a cliffhanger. Comics and manga are definitely a under appreciated medium in society.

I’m hoping to have a “Manga of the Week” post to motivate myself to blog more which I often neglect.

So this week’s Manga is ….

Svetlana Chmakova’s NIGHTSCHOOL. Published by Yen Press

The Design

For one, the cover is absolutely beautiful. What I love about this cover is the fact that you can see the brush strokes of the artist in the hair and in the cityscape behind the main character. The character design is absolutely wonderful as well. The purplish highlights in the characters hair and clothes compliment the logo of the book and the sky in the back. Sneaking in towards the center of the book are colored pages which show more of the beautiful art while the rest of the book is in the traditional format of black and white pages. It’s a nice little breaker for the book.

My only criticism of the book is the use of typography for the text for the back cover. They used Herculanum which has a certain look to it. Fitting to its name, it looks like a emulation of Roman or even Greek typography on architectual structures. But, it also does give off a slight mood of fantasy and wonder so it seems fitting for the inside thought bubbles and Headllines. For the description on the back cover though, they should’ve used something that is a text font. Herculanum itself is a display font as Headllines, not meant for text copy. Is it readable? Sure. Why you complaining then? Because for the aesthetics of the book which is beautiful in itself, it would’ve enhanced it greatly if the font choices were different. The other thing thats bothering me is that the type wasn’t fixed so that there are no hypenated words at the end of the paragraph. I think if a different font was used, the hypens would’ve deleted themselves.

The Story

“Where do demons get their diplomas?” The night school of course. “Schools may lock up for the night, but class is in session for an entirely different set of students. In the nightschool, vampires, werewolves, and weirns ( a particular breed of witches) learn the fundamentals of everything from calculus to spell casting. Alex is a young weirn whose education has always been handled through homeschooling, but circumstances seem to be drawing her closer to the nightschool. Will Alex manage to weather teh dark forces gathering?” via little preview text on back of book

This story I believe shouldn’t be categorized as simply a girl or boy manga. It appeals to both audiences because its full of funny moments and mystery about each character. Its full of fantasy and makes you just crave more of the story. There are witches, vampires and vampire hunters in the story so theres plenty going on. I won’t give too much away I strongly suggest picking up a copy. I couldn’t put this down so it says a bit about it. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have gone past the first 5 pages.

Please do not go and read it on illegal copies online. That not only hurts the publishers, it also hurts the artist who work so long through so many revisions to get their work into a finished book. Please support the works of the artist. To buy yourself a copy please visit Amazon