"It's just not happening..." by V. Krätke (Netherlands) on Mar 2, 2005

I honestly tried to get into this manga. The art has a certain je ne sais quoi with its bizarre costumes and the effective cartoony sexiness of the male cast. A sprawling story with bucketloads of protagonists in a sort of cartoon-tech ancient China setting sounds like a tremendous premise. Four volumes into the manga, though, I'm still waiting for something really gripping to happen. So far, Hoshin feels oddly empty. There have been character deaths, plot twists and displays of massive cruelty by the main antagonist up to this point, but it all falls flat somehow. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think Hoshin's biggest shortcoming is a lack of focus. The manga can shift from dramatic character moments to supposedly comical scenes where Taigong/Taikyobo acts like a complete idiot at the drop of a hat. It's disorienting, it distracts from the punch of supposedly dramatic scenes, and the comical bits are never that incredibly funny to begin with. Several chapters may be used to tell how Taigong recruits a new character with elaborate mystic powers as his ally, only to have said character vanish completely (they're supposed to return to Taigong's side later on, I suppose). It's just one of many plot elements that feel frustrating and anticlimatic. Maybe it's the overload of supposedly important stuff that ends up going nowhere, maybe it's the uncomofrtable balance between silly and dramatic moments, but the sum of Hoshin's parts just doesn't really stick with me. The cartoony art and the weird, anachronistic elements of the manga's world don't add anything to the story. The only thing that really sticks with the reader after ploughing through a volume of Hoshin is that... well, some people did a lot of stuff. I think Glenat's decision to use the Chinese spelling for all the character's names hurts this French version quite a bit. It's hard to keep track of all the Fei-Hu's, the Huangs and the Shibu-Xiangs even if you really do care about them. And since the manga obviously doesn't aim for an accurate rendition of the ancient Chinese tale (what with it's panda robots and energy blast weapons), the Chinese names add nothing to an already wayward and overcrowded mix.And sadly, I really can't be bothered with some twenty more volumes of said wayward and overcrowded mix.