Kurimoto's fantasy adventure novel series The Guin Saga
sells millions of copies in Japan, and while Yanagisawa's manga adaptation isn't going to quite echo that success in the U.S., the original appeal does flicker through. This final installment of a three-volume side project to the main Guin Saga
story line follows the warrior-king of Cheironia, Guin, as he does battle with a palpitating, plague-spreading mass of evil that threatens his realm. Guin—a massively muscled hero with a leopard-mask permanently affixed to his face—takes on the assembled villainous sorcerers (the magi of the title) lurking inside the sinister growth, while his sidekicks try to puzzle out the danger's deeper magical meaning. Although Guin seems more the strong and silent type, he does evince a certain Conan-like weakness for the feminine, evidenced in the seductive thrall he's held in by the strongest of the magi, the Black Witch Thamia. While the Kurimoto story line is byzantine in the extreme (there's clearly backstory upon backstory beyond the reach of all but the initiated), Yanagisawa's illustrations cut cleanly through much of the exposition, yielding a surprisingly graceful action-adventure series with a handful of darker adult themes. (Mar.)
