Unicorn Jelly - new, but familiar

[vakkotaur]

Credit to melskunk for pointing out Unicorn Jelly.

"Unicorn Jelly is a philosophical science fiction manga strip which tells a metaphoric and purposeful story with a definitive beginning and ending."

Despite that description, it's actually good. I looked at it, expecting to have it look like the typical manga (either overly cute or bletcherously oooogley) and instead saw a rather well-drawn comic with a decent storyline. I'm at comic #520 or so (start at the beginning and give it, say, 14 comics, before deciding) and it's still interesting, though there are now enough characters and twists that I can get a bit lost from time to time. Perhaps if I hadn't read all that in pretty much one sitting last night, it would have helped.

There was something familiar, though, it is a possible spoiler, so...

It felt very familiar after a while. At one point I exclaimed, to myself, that this was leading to a situation like in A Canticle for Leibowitz. There is a similarity, but I'm not far enough along to see how far it goes. Like Canticle, Unicorn Jelly manages to be dark and yet somehow hopeful.

"Magic" seems to work, but that's not a sure thing - it could be simply unexplained physics of the world. Some suspension of disbelief is required to deal with how the UJ universe operates, but since the "magic" is left open, it's only one thing and has driven the plot.

Comments

[wolflahti.livejournal.com]

The first few strips started out uneven and amateurish and then got cooking along really well for a while once the author found her footing.

But it falters near the end, failing to live up to its promise. The author apparently forgot that Uni was a character in the story--he just sort of disappears with no explanation--unless I really missed some major point that being made. (That's certainly possible, but I'm pretty sure I was paying attention.)

Still, it's well worth a read - and, of course, the price is right. :)

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Having now read the complete story, I see that. The ending, or getting near it, felt a bit messy too. I wondered if the timeline jumped ahead, if it was vision/dream, if some things were flashbacks or flashforwards. I also wanted to see Uni more in the story - or a good explanation of why he wasn't. At the very end, was that Uni in new form, the original unicorn (despite the change of the world), or just a hallucination?