365 Days of Manga, Day 203: Tetragrammaton Labyrinth

TETRAGRAMMATON LABYRINTH • Ei Itou • Seven Seas Entertainment • 16+
In Victorian London, a magic-using nun and an immortal little girl have a secret calling: to fight demons and evil sorcerers. While a middle-aged investigator from Scotland Yard investigates the bizarre murders around town, Sister Meg and Angela do their job on behalf of a secret demon-hunting organization, and brood about their unspecified sins. You have to respect an artist who’ll draw a period panty shot with Victorian-style bloomers, and Angela’s gatling gun is nice too, but there’s little original here: Goth-Loli Angela is your standard emotionless prepubescent moe object (i.e. Gunslinger Girl, Blood Alone) and the action-horror plotlines are merely competent. One of the main weak points is the art, which tries to make up in screentone what it lacks in clarity; too-small fragments of London are seen mostly through bad isometric video game camera angles, and the corpses and monsters look like something from a below-average shojo horror manga. The yuri element is simply the faint suggestion that love is one of the “sins” which binds Angela and Meg. (Review by Jason Thompson – originally printed in Otaku USA magazine.)
This review just covers the first volume of the series — I still need to read the rest. I’m out of the country until April 18, so all the winners of “365 Days of Manga” between then and now will be announced after I get back. Please keep entering the contest, there will still be a winner a day, I’ll just be announcing them all at once!