Captive Hearts of Oz, Volume 1 - Angelo's Review

Captive Hearts of Oz is a new manga series from Seven Seas Entertainment, who also published a beautifully illustrated collection of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz last year. The series is inspired by Wonderful Wizard (and, based on the first volume, is a loose adaptation of that story) written by Ryo Maruya, a New York Times best-selling manga writer, with art by Mamenosuke Fujimaru.

As I mentioned in one of my recent posts here, I've been let down by this sort of adaptation before. I read the first two books of the Dorothy of Oz manga series and couldn't get into it enough to read the rest of them. The story was all over the place and had less and less in common with the source material as it went on. I'm happy to report, though, that Captive Hearts of Oz is much better.

I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of story going into it, so I was surprised to find that it doesn't veer very far from the Wonderful Wizard story, especially not at first. It begins much like you'd expect it to: we're introduced to our protagonist, Dorothy, who lives on a farm in Kansas with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry (and Toto, too!) and finds herself separated from her family and in the Land of Oz after a tornado. She learns from the Good Witch of the North that she (or her house) is responsible for the death of the Wicked Witch of the East, is given the Silver Shoes, and sent on her way to see a wizard named Oz in hopes that he might be able to send her home.

Things start to get interesting when Dorothy encounters Hayward, this story's version of the Scarecrow character. He considers himself to be a scarecrow and Dorothy accepts that, but he looks human. There's some fun dialogue between the two in their first interaction, and I really enjoyed their chemistry throughout the book. It's not totally clear yet if he's intended to be a love interest for Dorothy, but there are definitely some sparks there. I found Dorothy's other companions to be not nearly as interesting or likeable, however, especially the Lion, who, like Hayward, is drawn as a human but for some reason says he's a lion. We are given some backstory for the Tin Woodman character (which is pretty much the same as the one we've come to expect), but I'm hoping these characters are fleshed out more and grow on me in the next books.

I appreciate that this adaptation takes almost no cues from the MGM movie and pretty much uses only Baum's book as its jumping off point. For example, Dorothy's shoes are silver and are never referred to as slippers, and the Good Witches of the North and South are two different characters. There's even a character named Ku-Klip in here, who's the Tin Man's tinsmith and has an interesting dynamic with that character.

My only real problem with the first volume of Captive Hearts of Oz is that it's a little hard to follow at times. There's a subplot happening throughout the book that's intentionally mysterious and removed from the main story, and it's not always clear what we're looking at or who's speaking in these scenes. I feel kind of indifferent about the art overall, but I do wish that there was more creativity in the way that the world and the characters are drawn.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this book, and I'll definitely be picking up Volume 2 to see where the story goes from here. The first volume is essentially a retelling of Wonderful Wizard up to the point where the Fab Four are together and on their way to the Emerald City, but I suspect the story will continue to evolve from that as it goes on.

You can buy Captive Hearts of Oz, Volume 1 in paperback or e-book format on Amazon here. Volume 2 is set to be released on June 6 and is already available for pre-order (here).