Red River, Volume 25 (Chie Shinohara) 3

I understand that some women like "guilt free" non-consensual fantasies, in which the hot hero can't keep his hands and naughty bits off the "pure" heroine, overcome by the sheer stallion force of his unbridled passion. It's a staple of old-school girlie smut. You're not responsible. It's just his charm. Go forth and fornicate!- vicariously. Both good girl and wanton vixen remain, paradoxically, bound within the same character.

However, you'd think by volume #25 of a series, your main character (hailed, no less, as the incarnation of that very forthright goddess of war, wooing and sex- Ishtar!) would start to act like, you know, she likes doing it! With her husband! The king! Who's hot! And loves her! Doing it with her husband, or fiancé- or whatever it is that makes "ordinary Japanese schoolgirl" (please tell me you saw that one coming) Shuri princess of the Hittite empire, consort to hottie prince-cum-sovereign Kail.

The rather pretty cover does not promise a passive heroine and lusty hero, instead, giving us a demure, brooding prince and his tenderly smiling princess draping him with a garland of flowers. (The flower-strewn cover, in fact, does not fail for a depiction of a girl hailed as Ishtar, Queen of Love.) Nor does it promise a tale of political intrigues, ancient warfare, frequent bloodletting, tainted loves and chilling brutalities dressed up in shojo adventure/fantasy conventions.

Keeping a pretty male villain in a perennial state of bondage and half-undress throughout a volume should be another cue that this is escapist romance with the un-dressings of drama and not a literary manga.

I want to like Red River... I'm a sucker for stories set in the ancient world (Anatolia- old-time Turkey, in this case), for stories in which the supernatural is a force of nature- incomprehensible, dangerous and breathtaking as a lightning storm flashing on mountains over the arid desert- and not everyday window-dressing. Red River has a beautiful art style- and a hoard of jewelry bedecking nearly every character which any self-respecting drag queen would envy. The complexities of a family villain who is not some distant, malignant specter but an ever-present threat (Kail's stepmother) who also happens to fiercely love her children (even if she's not above using them like pieces on a chessboard) is a nice twist in manga fantasies. But making the antagonist an evil priestess- a woman of power and action at home with her passions and sensual nature- in stark contrast to the "good" passive and non-sexual princess gets a bit old. Particularly when the Queen is a heck of lot more worthy of Ishtar than Yuri. I can't help wanting to like the bad dowager queen more than good ol' prim schoolgirl Yuri. At least she knows what she wants- even if the cast and readers seem not to have been fully let in on the secret- and is unrelenting in her quest to get it.

The good and evil of this story doesn't seem half so black-and-white as the jacket summary presents- something which only the otherwise useless Princess Shuri seems to be aware of. In "Evil Queen" Nakia's defense, I wouldn't be keen on a government which inflicted gross physical horrors on the man I loved, either. I just might become a ruthless, murdering "bitch" hell bent on taking down the crown- and my stepson with it. Or a bloodthirsty Hittite revolutionary, at the least. There's something to be said for fierce loyalty to your partner- even when he's been mangled. (And loyalty to the Queen who just may be your best chance at getting justice- or simply even. Some of whose royal children just might be yours.)

While this series intrigues me enough for a light reading (I'm interested in the fates and motivations of the antagonists), I'm not willing to fork out the money to shelve it alongside stories that offer meatier complexities to the dilemnas of love, ambition, revenge, passion and loyalty: Berserk, Arislan, John J Muth's Dracula, Paradise Kiss, Mars, Lucifer, Utena and Basara. Check this one out at your library or the used bookstore. Unless you're into all this.

Thanks to Sequential Tart for first publishing this review in their "Report Card" on April 13th.