Ark Angels Vol.3

Ark Angels #3

by Sang-Sun Park

The heartstopping journey continues as Japheth, Hamu, and Shem try to rescue an endangered lion cub. But when a group of vicious hunters stand in their way and want nothing more than to see the cub disappear for good, will the girls face their own extinction?

Genres: Manga, Fantasy

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2007

Reviews

[Alyssandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a great series. It is dissapointing that it ends so abruptly.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series was fine. A lot of creature to rescue of the week and is definitely a step down to me from Tarot Cafe but still enjoyable enough.

[Miss Ryoko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh....

Well at the end of volume 2, it said this: The sisters continue rescuing endangered species for their Noahs Ark and a new girl, Reika, arrives at school. When Reika sees Kirigi, it's love at first sight. Oh, no! How is Japheth going to handle this new rival for Kirigi's affection? She might even have to start dressing like a girl! And why does she always dress like a boy anyway? Those secrets and more will be revealed in the next Ark Angels!

Great.... except NONE of that actually happened. The only secrets revealed were the identities of Kirigi and Rikari... which really weren't huge revelations. But we never find out why Japheth must pretend to be a boy... there was NO meeting between Reika and Kirigi.... so, yeah... no sorry TokyoPop editors, but no secrets revealed. You failed.

I am a little bummed out about not ever finding out why Japheth must pretend to be a boy. The other stuff doesn't really matter - whether they were able to save the Earth or not, but why would Sang-Sun Park leave that mystery unanswered? Unless there is a portion of this we're missing here in the US...

Besides that little mystery never being explained, I really did enjoy the message of this series, especially on the last page where it said "Every time we bring another endangered species onto our Noah's Ark, the clock is set back one minute. Won't you all help us complete our mission? For your own good...." I loved that! Such a simple, yet powerful statement to end the series.

And I'll end this review with this:

Steve Buscemi!? LOL!!!

[Jody Mena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but sweet ~ probably too short though! It ended so very suddenly! The drawing style was charming and delightful. The plot device of turning the animals into humans was not only visually more pleasing, but it brought down an emotional hammer, watching them being hunted, eaten, slaughtered for their skins and so forth. The story was rife with extremely poignant metaphors and in the end turned out to be something of a graphically portrayed fable, which is why I feel there were so many holes in the plot - it wasn't necessarily meant to be a believable story, but rather the main point of the story was to convey the moral at the end. Said moral is that if humans don't stop destroying the earth, the earth, and indeed the universe itself, will sentence us to death before we can take the rest of creation down with us. In spite of the abruptness of the ending, I really liked how the series concluded as a cliffhanger, with Shem, Ham and Japheth continuing their mission, and the earth and the moon deliberating on whether or not to execute the humans, by fire or by plague, the clock continuing to tick down to midnight when it would be too late, and at the very last, the plea for the reader to join Noah's daughters in their quest to save the human race by making the choice to change our ways. Even though this series is very cute and funny, and occasionally quite random and cartoonish, it actually had a really profound message, and by the end, I was surprised by how enchanted and moved I was by it! It's definitely worth reading!