Oh, good! You decided to make a discussion thread for the manga.
This may be a general question, but does anyone know (if anyone responds, that is XD) if it was Makoto who designed
the general look for the Deltora Quest characters in the Japanese adaptions? I find it interesting how between the anime, game
and manga, characters have slightly different features, when you would expect they'd try to keep to a constant style.
As for the first issue itself... I didn't mind it. It really does differ to all the other adaptions, especially since the prologue was condensed
in both the anime and game.
I have to say that I enjoyed it more before Jarred fled from the castle. Afterwards, I think the artist veered off into their own direction too much, giving the carriage driver a bigger role and cutting out Crian and Anna (initially, anyway). Instead, the artist decided to focus more on Endon and Sharn, which just seemed odd. Perhaps a subtle hint...?
I also had a few issues with the style itself. I really liked the art style before Jarred is chased from the castle, mostly because it was both simplistic yet fitting to the series. Sort of like Legend of Zelda in a way. But after that... I dunno, it seemed like the artist felt the need to make it darker and edgier. Especially in the case of Prandine. Oh, poor Prandine... way to make it obvious! XD Really, you can tell the artist went through at least three different stages of development for him, finally opting for a more crony and obviously evil look for him. This didn't seem to be the case for the other characters, but if you compare sections of the book it's pretty conspicuous.
Other than that... probably the ending was a let down for me. The whole confrontation with Prandine and the Grey Guards felt terribly cliched and dumbed down in comparison to the novel. The callback to the previous chapter was pretty out there, but I feel that the artist's portrayal of Endon and Prandine's relationship was well done. The original novel didn't really present any themes of emotional abuse between the two, so I thought it was a nice touch.
That's all I can really think of! I hope somebody will reply... XD