When I was younger, around the year 2008, I watched an old anime called Hakushaku to Yousei, commonly known in English as Earl and Fairy. I remember watching it all the way through and liking it as a teenager, but after that, I just forgot about it. Earl and Fairy actually started off as a light novel series by Mizue Tani, completed in 2021 at a total of 32 volumes. The light novel series hasn't been licensed, and originally, the anime wasn't either until Discotek Media put it out in the US in 2017. However, Viz Media picked up the manga adaptation in 2012, and only just now have I managed to get around to actually reading it. It helps that it's complete at four volumes and cheap copies of the paperbacks can be found online pretty easily. So now that I've finally checked out the manga...unfortunately, I wish I could like this more than I do, because even by light novel adaptation standards, Earl and Fairy's manga is pretty dull.

And it so shouldn't be, because the premise is actually pretty interesting! In an alternate 19th century England, fairies are said to be the stuff of myths, but Lydia Carlton, a 17-year-old girl living in the town of Edinburgh, knows them to be real. She is a fairy doctor like her late mother, and her job is to speak with fairies and solve problems. Unfortunately, regular people can't see them, so most people think she's insane. But Lydia is determined to carry on her mother's work and give aid to fairies and humans alike. A trip to visit her researcher father leads to her getting kidnapped, but is rescued by a rogue claiming to be named Edgar Ashenbert, also known as Lord Ibrazel and a supposed descendant of the fabled Blue Knight Earl. Edgar needs Lydia's help to find his ancestor's sword, and as much as she really doesn't like him, Lydia has no choice but to help him in his quest.

Having seen the anime in high school, kid me would have absolutely devoured this series. But reading the manga as an adult...I really hate to say it, but this manga adaptation is actually pretty dull. All the characters are really bland and one-note, little more than amalgamations of shoujo cliches you've seen in many other mangas before this one. But the main reason the characters are so dull is that the manga continuously violates "Show, Don't Tell." The manga is very wordy and full of exposition that could have easily been better off actually being depicted on the page. Many characters shill Edgar as being this troubled yet kind man, but the problem is that he's not actually written or depicted in a way that communicates any personality beyond vague smarminess or scheming manipulator, and he's constantly using other people, Lydia included, for his own means, not caring about how they'd feel about being roped into his schemes, something Lydia frequently calls him out on.

Another contributor to this is the manga's ridiculously fast pacing. It jumps from one plot point to the next without much in the way of a break, and a lot of details are just info-dumped by various characters rather than having things play out organically. While I normally like it when something actually strives to tell its story rather than dawdle around with needless filler, Earl and Fairy just rushes through its plot and expects its readers to care about it while making no effort to really flesh everything out. Plus, considering this manga is only four volumes long, it doesn't even have time to resolve all of its plot beats anyway, ending on a really open-ended note with a lot of the big mysteries never getting wrapped up in any way. This is further compounded by the fact that Ayuko, the illustrator for the manga, says in the author's notes that she was forced to leave out a lot of details from the novels, so was unable to adapt all of what was available at the time of publishing. It's a shame that she wasn't able to adapt the light novels in a way that did the source material justice. Whether it was due to time constraints or executive mandate, who knows? Plus, I remember the anime having several characters and subplots that don't even exist in the manga, so her claim that she wasn't able to adapt everything from the light novels definitely has merit to it!

The only positive thing I can really say about Earl and Fairy is that the artwork is, at the very least, competent. The character designs are faithful to those of the light novel, but are still pretty generic by themselves. The backgrounds and the fairy designs fare much better, as they're given the appropriate amount of detail, and many of the fairies are given very fun, creative designs. I really liked the way the Merrows were drawn. That being said, the panels and their placements are very cluttered, paired too close together to the point of it feeling suffocating. The pages are often very crowded, and the visual flow between panels is stunted, making it hard to follow what's going on at times, especially when there's motion and action involved. So yeah, Earl and Fairy as a manga is generic, cliche, devoid of personality, and doesn't do the source material justice. It's really a shame, because in better hands, Earl and Fairy's premise could have been amazing. But it's not likely to enchant readers any time soon. If I ever get around to rewatching the anime, I hope to God it's somewhat better than the manga.