Twelve Kingdoms Volume 1: Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono(amazon.com)

The anime series Twelve Kingdoms is a bit of an anomaly – it starts out looking like it is going to be a typical magical girl story, but the series ends up dwelling more on interlocking stories among a large cast of characters and the geopolitics of a world with 12 small kingdoms, each with a divinely appointed ruler. The anime series didn’t have much of a resolution, it was obvious it was adapted from a much larger work, and the ending left me wondering what happened to the characters. So I was happy when I heard that Tokyopop was going to publish the source material for the anime – the series of books by Fuyumi Ono.

Yoko is a “good” girl. She studies hard in school, even becoming class president, but she doesn’t ever share what she’s feeling inside. Her parents put tremendous pressure on her to study hard, and her father has very traditional views of what she should wear and how she should act. There’s a quirk in her appearance – her hair naturally has a reddish tint, which causes people to wonder if she bleaches her hair and runs around with gangs.

When a mysterious blond man named Keiki shows up at her school, swears fealty to her, hands her a sword, and throws her on the back of a flying animal as demonic beasts start to smash up the teacher’s lounge, Yoko’s life changes dramatically. She doesn’t know what to do with a sword, so Keiki sends a being called a hinman inside her, which can control her actions in a fight. In the battle Yoko is separated from Keiki and ends up in a country she’s never seen before. She has to learn how to fend for herself among hostile strangers.

Yoko’s travels change her, and she’s a completely different person by the end of the book. In many ways this volume functions as a prequel, introducing the reader to the world, society, and mythology of the Twelve Kingdoms. People who don’t enjoy fantasy novels with a healthy bit of worldbuilding will probably not like reading Twelve Kingdoms, as there is plenty of exposition and explanation as Yoko gets used to her new world. This isn’t going to be a favorite book of mine, but I’m still interested to see what happens in later volumes once Yoko comes into her own.