Manga Review: Cirque du Freak Volume One

[Jason]

Title: Cirque du Freak Volume One
Mangaka: Darren Shan and Takahiro Arai
Originally Serialized In: Shōnen Sunday (Shogakukan)
Genre: Shōnen
Licensed by: Yen Press
Price: $10.99/US

Steve is just too damn cool. He’s a hell raiser with a single mom he’s sure doesn’t love him and yet he manages to be the teacher’s pet. He plays soccer, defends his friends from older kids, and fits in with the “it” crowd. He also has a fascination with monsters of all kinds, vampires being his preferred form of creep. So much of a fascination, in fact, that he’d just as soon leave his life behind to join the forces of the night.

Steve, however, is not the hero of our story.

The hero of our story is Darren Shan, a happy boy who happens to be Steve’s best friend. He comes from a picture perfect family, enjoys spending time with his friends, and is fearless on the soccer field. A perfectly normal boy, on the outside, his only tendencies to darkness is his love of spiders, which he considers the perfect creature. His happy perfect life, however, is soon to be disrupted when the circus rolls into town.

This is no typical circus. This is the home of the weird, the bizarre, the Cirque Du Freak!

Cirque Du Freak is the manga adaptation of the best selling novel series by Darren Shan, the Irish author of the young adult series of the same name. A contest was held by publisher Shogakukan asking for various manga authors to submit their version of the first couple of chapters of the novel. A judging panel was formed, Darren Shan served as the final judge, and manga-ka Takahiro Arai was hand picked to bring the series to life.

Having not read the novels I can’t comment on the adaptation but by and large Arai seems to be a great choice for this series. His artwork is well suited to the task, managing to show both the somewhat normal “slice of life” side of the series that runs throughout this volume while being sufficiently creepy enough to capture the more horrific side of Cirque Du Freak.

Yen Press does their typically top notch job adapting this series for US audiences. Sound effects are translated through out, a bonus page describing the creation of the series comes at the end of the volume, and a preview of the novel is included at the end. The dialogue flows well and mistakes are mostly eliminated.

Like the novel series that the manga is based on, Cirque Du Freak is aimed mostly for the young adult audience. While content is kept reasonably well suited for all ages, some of the themes will go over the heads of the overly young. All in all it is an enjoyable tale of horrific adventure that immediately made me think of Bradbury, which is never a bad thing at all.

Reviewer: Jason Punda
Proofed and Edited By: Mark Viola