Elemental Gelade Vol. 1

Elemental Gelade follows a sky-pirate (more of a pirate in-training) Coud Van Giruet, catching up with him as he discovers the mysterious Ren, an “Edel Raid”.

Discovering that Ren is a living weapon, Coud makes it his mission not to get recaptured as his pirate ship is boarded. Now on the run, Coud and Ren are trying their best to avoid capture, but seeing as Ren is highly prized among the scum of the world, avoiding capture is going to be harder than they thought.

We’ve all been down this route before. Pirates, living weapons, a main character looking for something to protect and so on. If there is one thing that Elemental Gelade is not going to win prizes for, its originality. In fact, all the early signs for this series point to a by-the-numbers adventure that would be unlikely to spark your imagination.

So why is it I found this book worth my time to read?

For one, it's the healthy mixture of light-hearted comedy and action wich takes cues from Fullmetal Alchemist. There's a healthy dose of light relief injected into the less action-packed moments which helps lighten the mood and delivers some much needed character moments.

However, Elemental Gelade’s main problem lies is in its predictability. Events and characters play out exactly as you would expect them to taking away some edge from the story. Surprises are few and far between so far, and my inetersted began to wane toward the end.

Elemental Gelade should be best seen as a stop gap manga. Something to fill the time before the next volume of your favourite manga comes out. It sounds harsh, but should improvements appear in the form of some less predictable storylines, then Elemental Gelade would be a recommended read. Until then, pick up when you have some reading time to fill up.