Reviews::Main

Author: Misao Inagaki Suzuki Takahashi Meimu Sakura Mizuki Year: 1999

This 5 volume manga series is only the second series of Manga I've finished, but it took me years to get through all 5 books. Based on Koji Suzuki's Ring series of books, the 5 volumes consists of 1 & 2 telling the story from Ring, book 3 telling the story from Spiral, book 4 telling the short stories from Suzuki's Birthday book and what I think is a version of the Ring 0 movie story for the last book.

The characters are true to the original novels in that Asakawa is a man. The first book is quite thick and things get thinner from then on. Which is a bit disappointing, because even though it's split over two volumes, the treatment of the source material seems rushed. I think without knowing the story already it would be hard to keep up with what's going on. By the time you get to the subsequent volumes, there are so little pages to devote to it that even with knowledge of the plot beforehand, I was struggling to keep up.

The art style is very basic and I can't say I was particularly amazed by it. There are also a lot of panels with no dialogue which makes following the plot even harder.

Overall, I wouldn't really recommend this series to anyone other than Ring completists. If you've read Suzuki's 3 source novels, seen the 7+ movies and are looking for more Ring, then it's probably worth it, otherwise I'd avoid. Also, disappointed to see nothing from Spiral yet again.

Dave W - 7th February, 2010 - 09:40