Under Those Piles of Reports: Shamrock

Posted on the 25 July 2013 by Kaminomi @OrganizationASG

no, there’s no relation btwn this and Seven Shades of Grey. Honest

Let’s just say there’s a lot of entertainment out there. And in a perfect world, we would be able to cover them all. Well, that’s kind of not possible. But there are gems somewhere out there, and reviewing them full bore would be kind of silly in certain cases. That’s why this column is here. We’ll take a look at whatever we can find out here that’s most likely not licensed, obscure, old, etc, and put them here. Previews of upcoming reviews might be here as well. The name of the column might not stick, but if you got any suggestions on the name, feel free to email us at organizationasg at gmail dot com. You can also send us any requests for content (anime, manga, games) to talk about as well as opposed to doing a formal review via email as well.

Anyways, let’s hope you’ll find something you’ll like here, ok? Good!

So I’m basically going on a MangaReborn spree. Don’t know what MangaReborn is? General gist of it is creators can have their manga up there, and then people volunteer to translate it into different languages. More information on it is right here. It says they’re still in beta on the site btw. I personally wonder when they won’t be in beta, as it feels like it’s been ages that the beta tag’s been there.

But ok, enough about the site. I’m not here to critique the site (you go do that), I’m here to find anything worth reading there. I did with The V Sign. How about Chloe Lapointe’s Shamrock? Wait, an American comic artist that’s manga inspired and I’m going to tell you all about it? Yeah, let’s go do that.

That feel when the stalker realizes they’re stalking

I only read 3 chapters of Shamrock on MangaReborn (that’s all that’s there*). In it, we meet general shounen protagonist 101 Isaac Matthews, a high school student who thinks staring at a girl in class is something he could get away with and not have anyone call him out on it. He then thinks stalking said girl is also something he could get away with and not have anyone call him out on it. It needs to be said that he gets caught red-handed in both cases. But don’t worry, he has his reasons: unlike everyone else in the class, Isaac sees Sam, our heroine, bring in…questionable materials each day, and only he can see them glow. It’s clear something’s mysterious about this girl. But he soon learns he should have maintained his mundane life. Sam happens to be a Gate Keeper, or someone who hunts down objects possessed by ghosts. And in revealing his ability to Sam, she wants him to help her out. This is probably the part where once again, curiosity killed the cat.

This was actually not too shabby a read. I didn’t quite know what to expect since I’m taking a chance on a bunch of titles, but this popped up on my search, and I came away mildly impressed. The art is pretty inconsistent at times, and this is probably about as simple a start to a comic that I’ve read in a while. That actually isn’t a bad thing, because events move at a brisk pace and you shouldn’t feel dragged down with poor paneling and poor text placing, which I know some manga can be accused of. And because the story is not all over the place at the moment, it makes some of the cool moments stand out more.

Like this. I think.

So in short, Shamrock is fairly delightful in its readability, and it can go any number of ways really. Definitely will be keeping up with the series.

*In doing my research, most of the webcomic is on her webpage. So you’ll probably want to go there to read everything.