On a Quest to Find Some Family

Ah, another success story of the Buscema School of Martial Arts.

Martial arts prodigy learns the secret of their parentage at the same time their home is destroyed and goes on a quest. That's the basic gist for Shaolin Sisters, the first volume of which I picked up about three months ago. Julin lives at the Fighting Fang Hall, trying to master the Shaolin Stone First, which would make her fist like unto a thing of, er, stone. Has she considered fighting a dragon? On her birthday, the hall is attacked by the apparently evil Bai Wang, who's after the 'secret power of shaolin.' 

Who isn't right? At troubled times such as these, I believe we all could use a little secret power. Mine's called caffeine. I would have said sarcasm, but that's not much of a secret.

When Julin returns and finds what's happened, she learns she has two sisters. Kalin lives with another master, and Seilin is a pirate queen. They all got the same dad, but different moms. And they each have a little bell, which make an odd ringing noise when you get them all together, which certain people are pretty sure has something to do with that secret power.

Julin's bubbly and impulsive, and excited to have sisters. Kalin's more quiet and reserved, but is happy with this as well. Seilin. . . does not give a crap about sisters. She's only excited to learn their dad is still out there somewhere. So she can kill him. She and the other two haven't come to an understanding by the end of the volume.

On the other hand, she made her entrance by riding across the sea on top of a giant marlin, then leaping onto the deck of her own ship, so I think we just have to acknowledge artists can have a delicate temperament.

The series is from around 2000 from what I can tell, but Narumi Kakinouchi's art style feels a lot older than that. I'm not sure who the target audience was, possibly young girls into martial arts, but it reminds me of some panels of the original Sailor Moon manga I must have seen somewhere over the years. Kind of alternates between "soft focus" look, and an extremely minimalist approach in the action scenes. At times, characters are barely more than a sketched out shape, and you just kind of have to infer what's happening. Or a lot of panels that zoom way in on an eye, or what someone is holding in their hand while the fight is still going.