I am going to be completely honest... I have never heard of this series before. I have read nearly every single title put out by TokyoPOP, my local library growing up having purchased a lot of them for their readers, but never had this one. I borrowed this from another library, very nice library it is but a very small manga section so far. Anyways, they have mostly newer manga, considering it is a newer library, they don't have many from the 2000s era of TokyoPOP manga, before they went bankrupt. So this series stood out to me, took me by surprise.
Planet Ladder by Narushima Yuri is about a girl named Haruyama Kaguya. She is an amnesiac orphan that the police found many years ago when she was just four-years-old in the middle of nowhere. Kaguya wishes to find her biological family and to know who she is. Currently she is living with her foster family but is soon whisked away by people who were battling to take her. She wakes up in the middle of the forest with a robot doll, who looks very realistic, with no idea where she is!
(SPOILER WARNING! START)
Kaguya and the doll end up at a castle where a beautiful silver-haired maiden lives. The girl takes in Kaguya, the doll having disappeared because Kaguya told it she didn't want to see it. She comes to learn that the girl's name is Shiina Mol Bamvivirie, Bambi-chan as Kaguya calls her. Bambi-chan explains to Kaguya about the nine worlds there are: Ancient, the first world; Asu, the second world; Eden, the third world and present day Earth; Telene, the fourth world and the one where they currently are; Geo, the fifth world; Geus, the sixth world;
Geo, the seventh world and the one that's hunting Kaguya down; Asuraitsu, the eighth world; and the Ninth World. Bambi-chan also explains about a prophecy that the Ancient world had predicted, concerning "The End." The "Princess of Ananai" will choose one world to save and the rest are to collide with one another, ultimately destroying them, leaving only one survivor. After this, Kaguya has a dream concerning the prophecy and many people are in it, including the men who fought, trying to take her away before.
A warrant is out for a girl with black hair and blue eyes comes out in Telene, looking for Kaguya, because she is the "Princess of Ananai." Soon enough, guards come to the castle and Bambi-chan has Kaguya escape through a hidden passage while she deals with the guards dressed as a boy. Kaguya finds the doll in the passage way where he "wakes up" so to speak. They speak and she discovers his name is Kagami, finding his voice familiar, from her childhood and from the dream she had recently. He tells her to trust Prince Seeu and Meishie Laracotte, the Prince being one of the ones who came for her on Earth and fought another to take her away.
Soon, Kagami is back to being a lifeless, sort of, doll. Bambi-chan comes down with Nadya, her horse, and then floods the underground chamber they were all in. They are then off, to search for Prince Seeu or Meishie Laracotte, but first they have to get to a "collapser," a machine that will transport them to other worlds.
After over a month, Kaguya meets a giant chicken! His name being Waseda Takeyoshi. He originated from Japan but fell through a rift between worlds and landed in the second world, Asu. It was many years ago that he landed there in comparison to Kaguya, approximately before the year 1947. He tells hem all his story about how he came to Asu and how he was now trapped in the body of a doll, and the most important part, how Asu came to ruin along with information about "The Mad Prince," Seeu. Soon enough, after this, Take joins them on their adventure of find Prince Seeu and trying to save the worlds!
(SPOILER WARNING! END)
This series is very confusing! I was lost in the very first volume, mostly due to mistranslations. Heck, in the first chapter of volume one, one of the panels says "drama" when it is supposed to say "dream." In volume two, the character descriptions for Idou and Seeu are switched to the wrong character image. Reading the first volume I thought the series was going to revolve around the people of the moon because the main character's name is Kaguya and she is apparently a princess. But no!
It's some kind of multiverse situation with nine worlds, kind of like the Nine Worlds in Norse mythology. I feel like there would be less confusion if this series was rescued and revamped with corrected translations by a different publisher, like Kodansha, who picked up many of TokyoPOP's old titles.
I almost gave up reading this title at volume two, it was really scrambling up my head, but I persevered and got through all seven volumes! Really, things got better with volume three and onward, the story started to actually make more sense and the translations as well.
The story itself is meh. The ending was completely unsatisfactory and some things were just thrown in there for the heck of it, it seemed. The last volume I didn't like. The story would've made more sense if there were more volumes, for Kaguya to have struggled some more, being the girl of the prophecy and all. I have read many "girl of the prophecy" tropes before: Basara by Tamura Yumi, Saver by Lee Eun-young and Legend of Nereid by Hwang Mi-Ri, just to name a few, and they all had their struggles they went through and grew as characters. They were dynamic! Kaguya is a very stagnant character, staying practically useless the whole way through. She didn't even really get stronger and actually be useful like Tsukino Usagi from Sailor Moon. Usagi was a complete crybaby who was bad at school and always relied on others for help, but she did grow out of that to be able to save her solar system! Kagura is expected to save the nine worlds but can't do anything! It's completely outrageous!
This manga series could've been better, but overall, I didn't like it. I don't really recommend this series unless you want to be riddled with disappointment. Heck, the mangaka didn't even give us much backstory for any of the characters, I felt no emotional attachment to them. I simply couldn't care less about what happened to them. The only backstory that was presented was the one for Take that featured Seeu, which I guess was supposed to make you feel something for Seeu but it didn't help that he barely spoke even after him acting less like a doll.
I hope you guys enjoyed this week's review! I really was hoping that Planet Ladder was going to be a good series I had overlooked, some kind of hidden gem, but it wasn't. This series can stay hidden. There is also no reason for the title to be as such, it makes no sense to me. Sure the characters can jump from planet to planet, but it wasn't the main focal point so who cares? Please comment down below your thoughts! Have you read this series before? How'd you feel about it? What did you think about the ending? I know that I absolutely didn't like the ending, it was poorly thought out and extremely rushed. Thank you all for reading! Join me again next week!
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