American Comiket

ANTHOLOGY 00

OUR REVIEWERS SAY:

Ah, I'm in heaven. Yet another light-hearted Weiss dj with a twist of the bizarre and more'n just a dash of comedy. From what I understand (thanks to the very helpful introduction at the beginning of the doujinshi), White Gravitation is a cross-over of Weiss Kreuz and Gravitation, a show about "sexual orientation in the music world". Although at first glance it seems like a strange concept mixing up these two completely disparate shows, it all seems to work. Very well, in fact.

Weiss is given an assignment where they are to go undercover in order to catch a pop-musician who is killing off his rivals. To help them out is the overly out-going and gun-totin' manager of Bad Luck, K, who just happens to have the same seiyuu as Crawford. Much to the chagrin of the Weiss boys, K informs them that they must now 'buddy' up since shonen-ai and yaoi are very popular with the ladies. This immediately sets off a three-way war between Aya, Yohji and Ken to see who gets to buddy up with Omi.

This short little introduction to what looks to be a series of doujinshi was enough to get me hooked and wanting to see more, and the fact that it has a color picture of K wielding a BAG on the cover doesn't help matters any. I must know what happens next! XD --reviewed by Cys

"White Gravitation" by Lily Huon is a humerous cross between Weiş Kreuz (White Cross) and Gravitation. The Weiş team has a mission: There seems to be a musician who is killing his rivals in the industry and Weiş is to pose as a pop band under the mangament of K (Bad Luck's gun-toting Manager). K claims that in order for their cover to be realistic, the apalled straight team need to "pair up" and pretend to be couples because, he insists, the fans go wild over shounen-ai. The result is an entertaining clash between the characters of Weş Kreuz and Gravitation with Omi being the sensitive damsel in distress and the object of a lot of teasing. You can tell Lily adores Omi ^0^

If the reader is unfamiliar with any or all of both these series' characters and backgrounds, they aren't likely to get lost. Lily provides a brief introduction to both stories and their characters on the first two pages. The third page is an introduction to doujinshi and following the story is a glossary of terms and an iconography. Throughout the book, the margins are used extensively to briefly explain Japanese terms and icons that she employed and which are common to manga and doujinshi. Overall, there is a lot of useful information for those who are very new to doujinshi and manga, and who need a bit of explaining. Odd as it sounds, Lily's scribbles in the margin weren't a distraction at all for me. That's not to say that some might prefer them to be a bit neater, but for me they added to the understanding and enjoyment of the parody that otherwise may have been lost.

The art style in "White Gravitation" is not realistic to the original artist, but rather is embellished with Lily's unique style - which I like very much. The frames consist of busy backgrounds, and what look like drawn tones. I wouldn't say that the presentation is messy, but rather busy and consistent with the zany feel of the story. The story text is hand written but easy to read. The content, by the way, is also easy to read and understand. Lily draws the characters with a variety of facial and eye expressions along with different body poses that make the story come alive. The doujinshi is a full 8-1/2x11 with a full color image on the cover. As stated above, the presentation could be a bit neater, but I found the piece to be enjoyable and look forward to seeing the next volume. --reviewed by Rence

White Gravitation is a Weiss Kreuz crossover with the yaoi manga Gravitation. In the White Gravitation story, an unknown musician is offing all of his competition in the music world. In order to put a stop to this, K (from Gravitation), the gun-toting manager of Bad Luck, recruits Weiss to put a stop to the murders. But in order to do so, Weiss must go undercover as a gay band!

I really got a kick out of this doujinshi. The story was fast paced and very well written. Two scenes from this book really stand out in my mind. In one, K mistakes Omi for Bad Luck vocalist Shuichi! Apparently the two look very much alike except for a difference in hair color. Soon after this, Aya, Ken and Yohji meet K for the first time. K comes from behind the 3 and asks how they're doing. All 3 immediately freeze and say "Crawford???". On the page there is a little side note saying that K and Schwarz member Crawford both have the same voice actor. Very clever writing on Omitchi's part!

White Gravitation's strengths are in the writing and pacing of the story. I also loved how the writer gave a brief summary of both Weiss Kreuz and Gravitation. For someone such as myself who has yet to read Gravitation, this was very helpful. All throughout the doujinshi there are also little side notes explaining various manga sound effects, expressions, and Japanese characters. This was also very helpful when it came to enjoying the story.

My only problem with White Gravitation was in the layout itself. In some panels the art looked like it was shrunken. This made it look like it may have originally been printed in a larger format. There were also several scenes where the inks could have been bolder which would have resulted in a clear, crisp picture.

All in all, I really enjoyed the story. The artwork was OK, but the story was wonderful! Quality stories are one of the main things I look for in a comic and White Gravitation definitely delivered.

While this doujinshi does have some shounen ai, there is nothing really explicit. There are a lot of shounen ai jokes that really contribute to the story. I can't wait to see volume 2! --reviewed by Jason

I've never read Gravitation, and but heard a lot about it so I read White Gravitation first. It's a crossover between Weiss Kreuz and Gravitation, a manga about the rock band Bad Luck, and two of their members, Eiri Yuuki, and Shuichi Shindo. For this mission, Weiss is part of this band and the jokes fly around (usually about homosexuality, since that is a big part of White Gravitation: Shuichi Shindo's love for Eiri Yuuki and Eiri Yukki's denial of his feelings.

One thing that was helpful in this pocket manga was an Iconography which was a kind of glossary of what certain symbols and Japanese lettering meant. The Iconography was at the back of the book and there are a lot of the symbols and lettering throughout the doujinshi itself. The only problem I had with that was while it was great to be able to understand things for a change, the book was a little small, so things looked a little smooshed together. However I liked the art, (her Omi was soooo cute) and I enjoyed reading this enough that I want to read the second one.

--reviewed by Janette

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