Review:

Princess Mermaid doesn't have any princess mermaids, per se, but it's got lots of sugary-pink ruffles and playful fish to disguise the gore and goth-nicity that lurk just beneath her pages. Ms. Mizuno's style can only be described as My Little Ponies meets Marilyn Manson. (Okay, so the toy-to-performer comparison might confuse you. Try imagining what Marilyn Manson would look like as a My Little Pony then. Cute, pink, pretty, and... what the hell is THAT?!) You'll be reading along, absorbing the technicolor pastels and characters so fantastically stylized you can easily see them adapted for a Flash cartoon, then all of a sudden BAM! There's a corpse or bare-chested mermaid copulating with a man, and you know that you are definitely not in King Trident's jurisdiction anymore.

I'd love to tell you that this is a "gawfic fairytale," but that all depends on your definition of "goth." Plus, I think Junko Mizuno has her own style which, like Trent Reznor's music, defies categorization. It's dark, but in a bright, spunky way. Blood doesn't ooze in a black, morose fashion. It brightly splashes across the page, almost comically. This book would definitely look at home on the comics rack at Hot Topic, and I feel it had more to offer than the current Dirge and Vasquez creations. (HT execs, take the hint already. Give us Junko.) Actually, it has more to offer than most manga Viz or TokyoPop releases. For all the seductive mermaids and jiggling breasts, this book carries a very subtle but very powerful statement which you won't get until the very end.

Basically, Julie and her two sisters, Ai (younger) and Tura (older), are mermaid harlots (that should pull in some young male readers). Ai is perpetually laying eggs and having lots of mer-babies thanks to the ministrations of the doomed sailors she and her sisters sleep with before chowing down on their flesh. Tura hates humans, most notably the Utsumi clan, a family of mariners who plunder marine life for profits. When Julie is captured by a runty Utsumi named Suekichi (who promptly unbuttons his pants and attempts to rape her--but she claws one of his eyes), who soon after saves her life, they sort of fall in love. Not that romantic, Disney-esque love. More like a desperate "our lives are going nowhere, so let's get married" kind of love. Secretly, they become lovers, and Julie takes care of the abused Suekichi, feeding him seaweed and clams when his brother starves him.

Then Tura finds out and all hell breaks loose.

Julie attempts to undergo an operation to become human so she can be with Suekichi, but things do not go as planned. What would have been a nightmare ending for any Disney princess turns out to be a blessing for Julie. She uses her new situation to protect her family, and Suekichi loves her more than ever.

I was left wondering how a story so wrong could turn out so right.

The only low part of this book? The paper stock is a cheap, newspaper quality. Although there is a blurb in the back that claims that Junko Mizuno herself chose the stock to "create a nostalgic 'American comic book' effect," it greatly subtracted from the color schemes and in some places made reading difficult. The binding quality is also sub-par, with several Amazon reviewers complaining of pages that fall out and the like.

Read this book a few times over before passing your final judgement. It's like industrial music. The first time you are exposed to it, it seems like a mess. But, the more you listen/read, the more you understand. The art, the story speaks to you.

Ms. Mizuno has made several other manga in the "nightmare fairytale" vein, including Cinderalla and Hansel and Gretel. I look forward to reviewing them both in the future.

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