MJ Review: Stray Little Devil Vol 1

[Jason]

Title: Stray Little Devil Volume 1
Manga-ka: Kotaro Mori
Serialized in: Dengeki Gao! (Media Works)
Genre: Fantasy, Shounen
Licensed by: DrMaster

Stray Little Devil is the story of a young girl, Pam Akumachi, who ends up getting more than she bargained for during a summoning spell gone wrong. Attempting to impress her friends, she ends up getting sucked into the Spirit World, a realm populated by devils on one side and angels on the other. After a few introductory mishaps, poor Pam finds out she's become a devil-in-training, and the only way she can get back to her own world is to become a full-fledged devil instead. Unfortunately, she's got a lot to do, with her first task being to find her own familiar spirit, and that's far from easy!

Now, I had no idea what to expect from this manga going into it. I'd never heard of it before in the least, but being a huge fan of pseudo-religious based fiction and the like, the art attracted me enough to give this one a try. I did have a little wariness after reading the age level, but I kept my hopes up as I opened the first volume.

Fortunately, I came away from the book anything but disappointed, even though it ended up being pretty much exactly what I had expected after reading the description on DrMaster's site, seeing the age level, and so on. Stray Little Devil certainly is no Angel Sanctuary in terms of plot, but it doesn't make claims to be, either.

For the most part it's cute and mindless, and easy to finish in a rather short period of time. The art is also much better than I anticipated at times, with certain dramatic panels and bonus art featuring a much higher level of quality than most of the book. It makes me wonder why the artist hadn't put this level of work into the whole story.

There aren't too many problems I have with the quality, though. The first is that the inking is a little heavy at times, though I don't think this is DrMaster's fault. Some action scenes are so heavily darkened that it's near impossible to tell what's going on, as half the panel is filled with huge black spaces from all the ink. Also, the font used is a bit tiny and makes some words annoyingly split onto two lines, sometimes even small and bunched together enough to have trouble reading what the bubble even says. I hope this gets changed in later volumes, though it wasn't too great a problem.

All in all, I would certainly recommend Stray Little Devil if you've got the money to spare. It's not a prime title, and you might have difficulty spending your last $10 on such a short book, but overall it's a good, entertaining read.

Reviewed by: Kiara
Proofed by: Iliana
Edited by: Firedog