Swan: Volume 7

This is a ballet story. That's basically what it's about. I happen to love ballet stories, but if you don't then their really isn't much reason to pick this one up. Unless of course you pick it for the drama. It is a varied and complex storyline with many different twists and turns. The author throws you for one loop after the next. The art style is quite intricate and involves a lot of black to white contrast. The author goes more for realism then most. Beautiful story. Masumi is a humble ballet student at a very laid back, unprofessional ballet studio. She gets invited to a prestigious competition and has no idea why. She meets many friends but makes more enemies. Not out of any fault of her own, she just keeps getting favor after favor because the higher ups think she has potential. Which, she does. The other students just don't get that. She is the wildcard in all of the expert ballet things she does. She is the exception and that makes people angry. Masumi is a clumsy, naïve girl but she really loves ballet. This is a great, involving read with romance and challenges. You'll grow to love the characters and you'll really care about them. However, you just won't like it if you hate ballet.

A manga from the 1970s that's full of beautiful artwork. The story can get a little too much like a soap opera but it flows beautifully that one tends to forget that. A highly recommended series.

I think this series is absolutely wonderful. It is so well written and full of detail. I've learned so many things about ballet! I can't imagine the enormous amount of work the author put into this. I really hope the entire series gets published because I'm hooked. The backgrounds and sweeping landscapes are also divine and I really love all the characters. It is not full of errors like that other reviewer states, the names have been transliterated from Japanese pronunciations so of course they wouldn't have the proper Russian spelling. I really love the main character because her emotions seem so real and her struggle is so compelling. She doesn't cry all the time, and when she does I think it is justified.

CMX have done an excellent job of printing and presenting this volume of the famous ballet manga, the first of 21. Their translation's not bad, either. However, I do wish someone had thought to follow Del Rey's lead and provide a short explanatory introduction, otherwise "Swan's" primary audience (mainly girls from 10/11 up) are likely stumble on a few puzzling elements. Many of these arise from the fact that this title began publication almost 30 years ago - it ran in a Japanese girls' manga anthology from 1976 to 1981. Thus, Russian dancers come from the Soviet Union, whose main cities are still Moscow and Leningrad, rather than Moscow and St Petersburg. Then-famous real-life characters introduced into the story (Margot Fonteyn, Georges Balanchine) are less likely to be well-known; and so on. But the main difficulty lies in the style. Not so much the graphic elements of random flowers, stars, floating feathers etc - these are still with us, after all, and even appreciated. Not even those incredible 70s fashions - girls wearing knickerbockers, knee-high boots, huge floppy caps! guys in enormous cable-knit sweaters! everyone wearing at least three layered tops! No, at least in the early volumes it's the all-pervading melodrama, typical of shoujo manga at the time but now much toned down. Two girls caught talking in class weep and tremble before their teacher's anger. The simplest announcement creates shock-waves of tension among the students. Lots of fun if you want to wallow in the sheer emotion and angst of it all; perhaps harder to understand if you're used to the modern style. Nevertheless, there's a lot for anyone to enjoy here. At the time Ariyoshi wrote, ballet was still regarded as an exotic foreign import in Japan, appealing to a minority audience and with no official support. "Swan", superb entertainment though it is, thus has a didactic function as well: the author wants her audience as well as her characters to understand the foundations of this art. Ballet steps mentioned in the text are then described in footnotes; whenever her characters watch a performance, Ariyoshi includes information on when it was created, where performed and who first danced the main roles. Thanks to her superb illustrations - which only get better as the story goes on - this is no dry instructive exercise: she builds up a real sense of the history, traditions and dynamism of both classic and (later in the series) modern ballet. The first volume, as always, acts as an introduction to the entire long story to come. Our heroine, Masumi, has studied at a small amateur ballet school in the rural northern island of Hokkaido. Through a series of coincidences and amazing good luck, she's accepted into an elite group of students being trained in Tokyo by no less elite foreign teachers, including the handsome and enigmatic Russian, Sergiev. Masumi has natural talent and a passion for dance. However, the weaknesses in her early training may prove