By Dustin Cabeal

Her Impact! Suffers from what I call the “Manga Effect.” As you can probably already guess from that labeling, its manga inspired. In the case of Her Impact, it attempts many of the tropes while offering a story that you’d likely never read in a manga.

The story follows a single mom working what we can only assume is a crappy job at a law firm. Her father was a boxing champ in Japan, and she is half Japanese. We’re walked through her world, from the job to picking up manga for her gifted son. A chance encounter later, and she finds herself at a boxing gym.

There are two issues with the story. The first is that it doesn’t fit the manga style and the second is that it doesn’t need it. This story doesn’t need to be told in Japan and hell; a more boxing-centric country would have been a better fit for it in general. The Japanese elements don’t feel authentic in the least bit. They feel like second-hand knowledge learned from manga, anime and maybe some time abroad, but the entire setup of the character and story is too unbelievable given the setting.

The dialogue is rough. The main character talks out loud consistently, giving the reader exposition after exposition. Every interaction she has with another character sees the roles reversed in that the new character dumps exposition on the reader. The story really tries, it tries to cover the world and setting, but there’s a lot lost in translation (metaphorically speaking this time).

The artwork is the strongest aspect of the comic, but the catch is that none of it looks like Japan. It just seems like a city that could be anywhere. Most of the characters look American, but with manga-inspired hair. None of that is bad, and if it were just set in America with this style of art, it would work just fine. It’s the setting that ends up hurting the story and subsequently the artwork as well.

I’m perfectly fine with a creator being influenced by manga both in story structure and artwork. It’s when they’re inspired by it and then try to create a Japanese manga that I end up shaking my head. Trust me, I get the desire, but at the end of the day it doesn’t work out. It ends up feeling like two story cultures fighting for page time and as a reader that’s not enjoyable.

Score: 2/5

Her Impact! #0
Self-Published