Miki Falls, Volume 1: Spring by Mark CrilleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I can’t lie, I did not have very high expectations going into this book. That’s probably because I always can’t help but fear the worst whenever I read something written by someone I’m familiar with, whether it be a friend, an author whose book(s) I’ve read before, or in this case, someone whose YouTube videos I had begun watching in grade 5. Those videos are the reason I bought this series, but I’ve been apprehensive to read them for a while now for the aforementioned reason, and also because this is Crilley’s first manga venture and I knew that the art was going to be a bit… Off. I can’t say that I was wrong about the art, but as for the rest of the book I was happily surprised.
The concept of this book is along the lines of things I’ve read millions of times before, however it has been twisted on its head and I found myself liking it a lot. In the past, I've complained about the cliché where the main character is some quiet emo loser who inexplicably and unrealistically catches the attention of some hottie who is stupidly resolved to follow them around and court them despite how shitty the main character is. Well, Miki Falls is interesting in how these roles are switched! The main character, Miki, is the hottie who stalks the quiet emo loser despite his shittyness. I'd say it's done rather well because we see that Miki's infatuation is not for any inexplicable or stupid reason, and as a matter of fact we as readers are also interested in finding out more about said quiet emo loser. This book puts some otherwise lacking perspective into the hottie stalker character.
On the negative end of the spectrum lies the lack of understanding of the sequential art medium that is evident within this book. It's as if Crilley wrote the script and was like, "This wordplay is so good, I've got to keep it in the final version," and just drew an illustrated novel around it instead of using it to shape a manga. There is SO much overlayed text that tells us about what characters are doing or feeling instead of art showing us, effectively disregarding the whole point of using a graphic medium. However, this is one of Crilley's older* series and I've watched a video of his where he directly references this, so I know that he has since learned from this mistake. I'm more baffled that none of his editors pointed this out to him in advance and that this book was allowed to be published this way.
*Miki Falls, (2007), is older than his newer work, however in the grand scheme of his career he had actually already been publishing comics for six years before starting this series, so I'm surprised that he was still making this mistake at that point in his career.
While there is an evident juvenile understanding with regards to showing and not telling, the panel layouts and pacing were well done and the mystery was intriguing enough to keep me interested in the story. I found the romance to be satisfying because of the sense of a slow burn that was built and because of the lack of any over-exaggerated fangirling or fantasising about the love interest. This book is also infused with Crilley’s signature sense of humor, which is good but at the same time almost jarring in that it is so different from the humor that is found in Japanese manga.
I’m glad that I own the whole series so that I can continue reading right away.
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Click to read all of my Miki Falls Reviews:
Volumes: 1*, 2 (not read), 3 (not read), 4 (not read)
*Current review
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