Para Para Vol. 1: v. 1

Yuki, a young dance competitor, and a young gangster are drawn together by the events which led to the death of Yuki's sister. Action, mystery, intrigue, and hip dance moves help to raise the popular Para Para craze to new heights.

In this graphic novel from Hong Kong, Seto spins the video game dance craze Para Para into a melodramatic romance. He deals with young lovers engaged in dance competitions, à la Saturday Night Fever, with Para Para substituting for disco. The heroine, Yuki, seems arrogant at first, showing off her lap swimming abilities; she's the type who needs to prove her self-worth through her athletic prowess. She thus becomes determined to win a Para Para duel against a more experienced dancer. Seto has undertaken a considerable challenge in telling a story about dance through the static medium of comics, but hasn't found a solution. The dancers seem to be merely striking poses, moving their arms rather than their entire bodies, without providing readers with a visual way to judge the dancers' abilities. The story descends into a morass of clichés. Yuki meets the handsome Dennis, who isn't just a top dancer but a noble ex-gangster who was in love with Yuki's lookalike sister, Mary, who was gunned down on their wedding day. Yuki and Dennis fall in love, natch, and Dennis turns out to be terminally ill. Aiming high, Seto explicitly compares his lovers with Romeo and Juliet. One character says Mary came from a wealthy family like Juliet's, while Dennis came from the "streets" like Romeo. Of course this is wrong: the Montagues were the Capulets' equals. Seto has misunderstood Shakespeare's story, just as he's failed to grasp the difference between genuine romantic tragedy and sentimental kitsch.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 8-10. Lurlene McDaniel meets Saturday Night Fever in contemporary Hong Kong--and it works! A lackluster student but a star athlete, Yuki is rich, privileged, pining for her dead sister, and apparently unloved by her powerful father. When a friend takes her to a nightclub and she's challenged to dance in a macarana-like competition, Yuki not only holds her own but also literally falls for bad boy--gangster, actually--Dennis, who turns out to be Yuki's sister's widower. However, this soapy manga isn't headed for a happy ending: Dennis suffers not only from guilt for having been the true target of the bullet that killed his wife but also from stomach cancer. The story rises above the ridiculous because of its well-developed, interesting characters. The artwork is appropriately hectic and nicely bound together with a palette of cool, pale color. The para para dance craze seems realistic as well as cutting-edge: a karioke-like machine sets the tempo. This isn't just for confirmed comics readers; it will attract romance readers and pop-culture hounds, too. Francisca Goldsmith
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved