Title: Emma
Genre: Seinen, Romance
Publisher: Enterbrain (JP), Yen Press (US)
Artist: Kaoru Mori
Serialized in: Comic Beam
Being an avid reader of Kaoru Mori’s Bride Stories, I expected Emma to be just like its successor: beautifully detailed with sharp and charismatic characters, and great stories. However, by reading the first volume…I saw how it was clearly not the case.
Emma, back when it was first released, was a manga that genuinely interested me with its Victorian setting and traditional maids, but it is only until just recently that I’ve began reading the manga (and with high expectations, which was a very bad idea).
It was pretty difficult to convince myself to keep reading Emma, mainly because of its lackluster story. Yes, I was perfectly aware of the fact that this was a just a love story about a maid and a man of a higher social class, yet I can’t help but think of what it could have been in the first chapters. Apart from a few interactions here and there with central characters, and one remarkable moment between the two love interests, nothing, and I mean nothing interesting happens until volumes four or five. There are even love rivals in the series, but they don’t put up much of a fight much to my disappointment and one of them immediately disappears once the plot finally decides to thicken.
After the first three volumes, Mori decides to spice things up a bit and add new characters who turn out to be one of the best things that’s ever happened to the story (by this I mean more maids to gush over) and will force guide our main characters to what is obviously the right path.
As main characters, Emma and William were pretty unexceptional and quiet, but I guess that’s what kinda-maybe-perhaps made their charm –in particular William’s- during some of the manga’s powerful moments. However, most of the time their soft nature or blasé-like reactions to things (which can possibly be explained because of the Victorian era setting, a period where people were usually distant and reserved) were frustrating to see and just made me want to skip through the chapters, and the fact that Emma and William were far from the only ones with these traits made it worse. Even the other couples in Emma were much more enjoyable and amusing than the main couple. It’s a good thing that there were people such as Monica with her annoying sister complex and the slightly unconventional Dorothea to balance out the others or else it would have been much more difficult to get through the end. Hakim also could have been a very interesting character, since he was planned for it, but it seems that he became too docile –so as to not overshadow William– as the story progressed.
Contrary to what you may think right now, I truly did appreciate Emma in its whole. For a manga which had gotten off to a rough start and also kept a few of its rough patches, the evolution in the art and story (especially the ART) was wonderful to witness to the point that I would easily recommend it to anyone patient enough to handle its difficult beginning. And if you ever do pick up Emma, I would also highly advise you to take a look at Emma: Further Tales for the sidestories on characters who didn’t appear as much as we wanted to, and most importantly, for the definitive end to the Emma story.
