Ral O Grad, Vol. 2 Paperback – October 7, 2008

the wild boy main character is truly unique and acts like a 15 year old who spent his life in jail great story telling, few artist can pull this off

Nice story, although its very short. But its a good manga to buy as it only have 4 volumes. Thumbs up! :D

yeah this is a good one, by the artist of death note, I liked it

As a Death Note fan, I had to read this. And while the story appears to be a standard boy-saves-the-world fare, it's actually deeper than that. As a manga superstar, Obata-san can pick whatever projects he wants to do. He showed he wanted to explore morality in Death Note (is it a good act to kill all criminals?). Now he's exploring psychological personality integration.In Jungian psychology, all those things that we do not like about ourselves are stuffed down and repressed into what Jung calls the Shadow. (Think all those times you said to yourself "I shouldn't be greedy" even though you wanted to be greedy and just repressed it.) Repressing the Shadow takes energy from our lives. Jung says that we should acknowledge that we have these dark impulses and accept them but not necessarily act on them. (So acknowledge you have this greedy impulse and be with it, but not act out of a reaction to the impulse--just feel the feeling and it will dissolve.) This insight is repeated throughout Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnostic Christianity, etc.In Ral & Grad, all the shadows consume the individual, that is except for Ral (and some others) that have developed an open relationship with (i.e., integrated) their Shadow. This is juicy stuff.The art is also fantastic. Because Death Note was mostly set in modern-day Tokyo, the art by necessity had to be realistic. Obata-san was able to make something magnificent because of the framing and layout of the different panels and scenes. He still has those same tools plus the ability to do incredible fantasy art. He has been released to create a whole world and it's incredible. I haven't seen a world this detailed and original since Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga.Certainly, as some of the other reviewers mentioned, Ral's breast-squeezing obsession may be a little too much and if you take it as just Japanese humor relief (Haruhi squeezing Mikuru's breasts for yuks, anyone?), it's more passable. Hopefully it will be toned-down over time. We already see in this volume that Ral is becoming a smart judge of character who prefers a strategic outcome over squeezing a queen's breasts. But if it does not, I'll have to wait to let my 12 yo daughter read this. In the meantime, I don't have to share this with her :)