Kuro no Hiera Glaphicos

[Hemisphere]

Light Novel by Urashino Akihiko. Art by Miyukiruria.

Cover illustrations and links to the actual books can be found here:
黒鋼の魔紋修復士 1
黒鋼の魔紋修復士 2
黒鋼の魔紋修復士 3
黒鋼の魔紋修復士 4
黒鋼の魔紋修復士 5

Volume 6 is out on 5/30/2012.

Official website is here.

---

Has anyone ever read this? Reading through Volume 1 right now...pretty interesting. The simplest comparison that could possibly be made for the lead characters would be Saito and Louise from Zero no Tsukaima (simplest, barest, most recognizable comparison, I'd say), except so much better and far more convincing. The way the world setting plays out is more reminiscent of a western fantasy novel, for some reason, and I find it intriguing.

Just curious to see if anyone else is into this.

...At the very least, the art is really pretty.

[blackwhite67]

Is there a premise you can give us?

[Hemisphere]

I don't really trust my translation skills all that well, plus I don't believe in spoiling people with summaries, but let's see...

For starters, the world is pretty Victorian in its appearance and design.

The premise is that Valeria Costacurta, a 16-year old girl from a formerly prestigious noble family, has been chosen to become a Dominas (? the term is 神巫 [ドミナス]) (equivalent to being "God's Wife"), due to her outstanding natural ability with magic. Magic in this world is via crests, which are more like tattoos, and only the most promising get to be picked as a Dominas; also, only one in ten people can use magic. Valeria accepted her role as a Dominas in order to revive her family's noble status, and she wants to achieve this with her own strength - this is her lifelong dream, and to her, the first step to accomplishing this dream just came her way, so obviously she's very much eager to take on the role. Despite whatever objection her father raises.

While every other Dominas, being maidens, are paired off with female partners (called Hiera Glaphicos) in order to protect their purity (as they are "God's Wives"), in her case, Valeria's Hiera Glaphicos is the young man known as Dimitar Richternach. He comes off as foul-mouthed, brash and tactless according to Valeria; Valeria, on the other hand, is viewed by Dimitar as haughty, overbearing, and completely clueless about the world. Dimitar's stepmom, Orvieto Richternach, assures Valeria that he will never lay a hand on her - because Dimitar only has eyes for older women. Ha ha ha.

Anyways, their first assignment is a secret mission - to investigate a supposed rebellious uprising in a nearby city, except things don't go as they were supposed to, and a simple scouting mission quickly turns sour.

I really have to say that the world building and the character interactions are what sells this to me. There are pages scattered around, explaining tidbits of the world here and there like eyecatches, while the interactions of the character feel natural and are engaging to read. You can really get a feel of their distinct personalities from the way they act and exchange dialogue.

[blackwhite67]

Does Dimitar have some secret past and does he have some secret skill or power?

[Hemisphere]

The first volume starts off with Dimitar nearly getting choked to death by his mother. And Valeria finds his magic crest unfamiliar. So yes, I'd say both applies.

[for3ver]

eh... did the cover kind of remind you of hyouketsu kyoukai no eden? or something rather >>

[Hemisphere]

Originally Posted by for3ver

eh... did the cover kind of remind you of hyouketsu kyoukai no eden? or something rather >>

氷結鏡界のエデン? Not at all, no.

[for3ver]

Originally Posted by Erhjegel

氷結鏡界のエデン? Not at all, no.

hoorah! I'm becoming senile... at 17!

oh.. and your right.. the art is quite nice... (the eyes are mesmerizing and shiny >>)

oh.. and while im at it.. what genre's does the novel have?

[Hemisphere]

Originally Posted by for3ver

hoorah! I'm becoming senile... at 17!

oh.. and your right.. the art is quite nice... (the eyes are mesmerizing and shiny >>)

oh.. and while im at it.. what genre's does the novel have?

Fantasy with magic and political intrigue. I'm reading through the protagonist's interrogation of an enemy grunt right now. Awesome.

[for3ver]

Originally Posted by Erhjegel

Fantasy with magic and political intrigue. I'm reading through the protagonist's interrogation of an enemy grunt right now. Awesome.

sounds interesting...

does he play the good cop or bad cop

i pray the latter ^^

[Hemisphere]

Kuro no Hiera Glaphicos: La Cronica del Ahmad -蜜月の終わり、雨の日に-

Short story by Ureshino Akihiko for Kuro no Hiera Glaphicos, published on FB Online. For those who follow the series, they might be interested to check this out.

[Insane]

Kinda reminds me of Densetsu no Yuusha, albeit with clueless heroine. BTW, do we get a badass hero here? If we do, then count me in.

[Hemisphere]

Update: Kuro no Hiera Glaphicos: La Cronica del Ahmad -蜜月の終わり、雨の日に-'s latter chapter is up and available, courtesy of Ureshino Akihiko.

黒鋼の魔紋修復士4 will be on sale November 30. Can't wait to get it so I can finally read Volume 3.

[Cosmic Eagle]

I'm thinking of maybe picking this up...how's it?

[Hemisphere]

I talked about this series at some length in another thread, and to make it easier for people, I should post what I mentioned over here as well. My apologies for the length, in advance.

Spoiler:

I thought that I might share my thoughts on some of the series that I'm reading, in case they might help as recommendations (in a manner of speaking). For now, I guess I'll talk about something that intrigued me with 黒鋼の魔紋修復士.

Spoiler:

I just realized that part of what draws me in to 黒鋼の魔紋修復士 is the characterization, not just of the hero and heroine (as it is this series' biggest lure), but also of the antagonists. They aren't depicted in the stereotypical villainous manner in that they are just baby-eating short of being heinous, but that they are characters merely putting their own self-interests ahead of everything else.

The lead pair (Dimitar and Valeria) act on behalf of their country's self-interest and well-being, and their "missions" are usually that of preserving their country's position of power compared to the other countries in their alliance. They also have their own self-interests to consider; Valeria wants to reclaim her family's nobility by serving as a Maiden, while Dimitar wishes to avoid disgracing the relatives who brought him in and treated him as family. In contrast, the antagonists also have their own agendas, and they are also in line with breaking the current status quo and gaining power and glory for their respective countries (Vol 1 had the disgraced general trying to show that he was still capable by leading a rebellion in the territory of their rival country, Vol 2 had a noble who was trying to lift up his country from near-insignificance due to the loss of their Maiden, Vol 3 had rebels resuming their civil war hostility as per their country's long history), but the way they go about it is different.

It strikes me that the only thing that makes them antagonists, really, is because of political and social circumstances, which is an interesting thing. They aren't portrayed as doing anything overtly villainous like other LNs do with their antagonists (and even Vanadis is guilty of depicting its villains in shades of black right off the bat, then flip-flopping so it presents the villain as somewhat sympathetic near the end of their character arc; though I get that the main reason Vanadis does so is because it's actually trying to show to the audiences how good intentions can end up wrong, and how Tigre might end up like them as a sort of parallel), they're just acting out of self-interest and are bound by the circumstances. They're not antagonists because they're serial murderers, or bad guys doing bad things, or just because they're horrible people - no, it's just that they're doing their thing, which might interfere with Di and Valeria's country's thing, so the two get dispatched in order to resolve it in a way that is beneficial to their country and to preserve the status quo.

It's an interesting thing to note, because 黒鋼の魔紋修復士 is really mostly character-driven (at least from how I perceive it) and this whole juxtaposition (or compare-and-contrast if you don't like pretentious vocabulary du jour) between the protagonists and the antagonists make for interesting food-for-thought. They really are antagonists, and not villains, and I find it quite a refreshing breath of fresh air.

There's more to 黒鋼の魔紋修復士 but I'd just end up rambling as to why I love it instead of coming out with something close to coherent and rational, so I should just end it on this note - that I like the way it handles characterization and its characters. They don't subscribe to archetypes and archetypal behavior as closely as you'd think, and most of the fun is seeing how Dimitar and Valeria handle each other as well as themselves from Volume 1 onwards.

That, and it's kind of a downer that you can't really judge the series from Vol 1 alone (if that's your thing), because Vol 2 does a pretty fine job of showing how capable Maidens and Magic Knights are (the exact terminologies the series uses for these characters escape me, nor do I know the proper romanization for them so I'm not using them at the moment - I know it's a European language but that's the extent of my lazy research; I have enough series on my list that are utter nightmares when it comes to finding out the right romanization for terminologies used).

Spoiler:

To add balance to my earlier post about 黒鋼の魔紋修復士, it has a lot of world-building details sneaked in between the pages - they help add to the setting, characters, roles, and history of world of 黒鋼の魔紋修復士. The author scatters them around, and they feel like jigsaw puzzles that add to the full picture of the world-building once you start collecting the pieces and putting them together. I'll upload some pictures of said pages as samples later so you can get an idea of what I mean. The author of 黒鋼の魔紋修復士, Akihisa Ureshino, also has this habit of junctioning scenes together in order to build up the developing story, and while it works out well for the most part, it can get a bit jarring and bothersome in some portions. To clarify: you could be reading about how Di and Valeria are about to get into this dangerous battle, only for the scene to cut away into a different scene between other characters discussing about circumstances and issues related to the said battle. It's nice for build-up, but depending on your tastes, it might get in the way sometimes, especially if you're already feeling the tension for the upcoming scene. But while the author does use world-building, and has political and social circumstances adding to his story's weight, they're not really discussed in full or close to Vanadis-level. The characters mention certain political, social and economic events and ramifications from time to time, but nothing extensive or difficult.

The author loves using a lot of terms like Hiera Glaphicos, Hierataker, etc. with matching kanji though so they're pretty understandable.

It also has no harem comedy antics, no ecchi fanservice - the comedy bits are mostly between Valeria and the other Maidens, or Dimitar and Valeria. The other heroines aren't there just for looks, nor are they there to exist as harem member #〇〇, but they are characters of their own with their own agendas, motives, and behavior. It's not peppered with love romance flags, or heroines making fools of and arguing with themselves just to attract the male's attention, or the male lead being stupidly good and being the generic goody-two-shoes protagonist, and it can be quite refreshing to behold. Di's sarcasm and tendency to piss off Valeria is hilarious and entertaining.

The series' in-universe logic of magic tattoos needing to be exposed in order to use magic is followed faithfully, there are no shounen power-ups and the way magic is presented and used by the characters come off as organic (as in, natural and scaled with the characters, not arbitrary and prone to sudden shounen power-ups). Battles don't come off as shounen-inspired battles; for the most part they're realistically handled (as realistically as magic with limits can be, anyways), and they're always engaging to read especially when Dimitar starts pulling off dirty tricks.

Spoiler:

I also forgot to add that the other Maiden heroines serve as foils to Valeria herself, the main heroine lead, which is a really nice thing. The story isn't so much dark as it is more serious than your average LN title, but yes, I know what you mean.

Here's the sample pictures of the world-building pages I mentioned earlier: [1] [2] [3]

Those are from Vol. 1. Shakira Babel, one of the Maidens (mentioned in that second link), appears in Volume 5, but for her to be mentioned that early (as well as mentioned in Volume 3 in-character by Dimitar) shows just how much the author's planned out the world-building ahead.

I forgot to comment on this, but since some people do take note of it: illustration-wise, it's not bad at all. The illustrations really help breathe life into the story, and there are few, if none, conflicts between the text depicting the scene and the illustrations portraying said scene.

If you will, allow me to add some more points in earnest: more characters get introduced as the volumes go on, and eventually the story's main protagonists become Di+Valeria and Jeffren+Lucius, with the former handling the politics world views and the latter getting down and dirty with the actual issue.

Valeria's characterization is flawed at the start, and she does go through gradual character development - key word being, gradual. If I had to put it in numerical values (despite how abstract this concept seems), it's like she gains 10% character development with every volume. She doesn't suddenly change character overnight, and I find it interesting being able to read and track her gradual growth. Her slow warming-up to Dimitar is also pivotal to this; as she slowly becomes more accommodating of him, she also begins to slowly take his criticisms of her to heed.

The series really follows its in-universe logic very faithfully, with its elements of; only few people can use magic; huge amounts of concentration and stamina are needed to make full use of magic; it takes a lot of training and effort to really make full use of magic; while magic knights can have multiple magic crests on their bodies, using multiple magic is next to impossible; Dominus are capable of using multiple magic at the same time due to their training from hell in their youth; etc. In fact, these are heavily emphasized, reiterated and made into a major plot point in Volume 2.

The illustrations...hot damn. Allow me to say that Miyukiruria's art really improves as the books go on, and the illustrations in Volumes 3 onwards really shine. They also don't conflict with the scenes they're presenting.

I'd say it's a refreshing series if you're looking for something that's not a cookie-cutter series, but for those people offended by the main character being a jerk (or not being celibate), this might not be for them.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Is the intrigue really psychological in that you don't know what their real intentions are?

[Hemisphere]

Not really, no. It's just refreshing that antagonists are being antagonists by virtue of being on the opposing side, and not villains for being baby-eating monstrosities. Their goals are rather predictable. It doesn't delve into that psychological, "I know you know I know" level of trying to outgambit each other, and the confrontations are rather straightforward.

That honor (of not knowing what their real intentions are) goes to メドウ; she's the one with ulterior motives, using the antagonists as means for her ends. All that's revealed so far is that she wishes to shake up the status quo by pushing the countries involved in the alliance in some (magic) arms race.

EDIT: My bad, I forgot about Jeffren, the crown prince. Jeffren's the one who pushes forward plans in a sort of vague, haphazard manner, but it's only until the end when all the pieces come together that his actions finally make sense. Does that qualify? My apologies if I haven't addressed your question, or if my answers come off vague.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Yeah I see. That means it's the more traditional, you read this for the characters kind of story?

[Hemisphere]

For the most part, yes, but I find the setting interesting as well. It gives me faint pre-WW1 vibes for some reason. That and the characters aren't as cut and dried compared to other contemporary titles helps a lot, in my opinion at least. And the story has a fairly serious vibe to it; not dark and edgy serious, but it doesn't clown around a lot (little to no shounen tropes employed).

[Drkz]

Art looks familiar o_O. I'll go poke around if i remember.