I've been flying through horror manga lately, and my search has led me to Toshio Maeda's work with Ogre Hunting. Yes, this is the same man who brought the United States such "classic" anime works like La Blue Girl and Urotsukidoji, two series that deal with the sexual side of monsters. But Ogre Hunting is not as focused on nudity and porn as Maeda's other works, and at least there's more action here than anything else.
The title clearly defines what this manga is all about - a man hunts an ogre who has been summoned to kill a young woman. It's pretty simple, really, and throughout the 80 or so pages of the story, Maeda never really fleshes out the storyline any more than this. While it lets the reader jump right in without being bogged down by exposition, it also doesn't require a whole lot of thought while reading. One can breeze through this single volume in under 15 minutes as it consists more of action-sequenced drawings than much dialogue.
Obviously, with little dialogue, there's also not much room to develop character. I think we get more personality from the ogre than we do from anyone else. At least the ogre and the hero have motivations; the woman being targeted is a very weak character who can do nothing but run. In the audience's eyes, there's not much to root for here - it's not really a question of whether the hero will win or not, because we're already told that he is the famed ogre hunter, and though it is up in the air whether the girl will survive, it doesn't really matter at this point.
I'm also not a huge fan of Maeda's art style here. Some of the drawings are a bit muddled and it becomes hard to understand what exactly is going on in each panel. The action is good when we get a large focus on it. But when Maeda draws small but concise panels, everything gets blurry. The ogre is gruesome, but not as much so as other monsters he has drawn.
We must keep in mind, though, that Ogre Hunting is probably not meant to be applauded for its story; it is, more likely, a hero story meant as a fantasy for men, a tweaking of the knight-in-shining-armor motif. This it does well, though little else. It's fine while it lasts, but one will most likely not take up the hunt again, or even remember it after it's finished.
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