Spera Volume 2

Spera tells of two princesses teaming up after leaving their kingdoms, accompanied by an eye-patch-sporting “warrior cat” and a bearded professor-looking guide who’s really a fire dog spirit. In this volume, princesses Pira and Lono go to the big city of Kotequog in order to join the Adventurer’s Guild. They wander around for a while and fight a couple of monsters and some bandits. It’s a typical fantasy setup, enlivened by the focus on two very different women as the central characters. One’s bookish and sheltered; the other, wearing men’s clothes and cropped hair, craves new experiences and rushes into conflict. It’s the kind of story gamers, bored with all the battles, want to develop character, but with so much of the exciting stuff told offscreen that the story seems lacking in conflict and forward movement. The switch in artists every chapter can be distracting, particularly since the lettering changes as well, and some is hard to read. However, the uniformly high quality of the artists makes for a nice diversity of styles, including some short stories about the characters. (Mar.)