Dragonero Senzanima: Victims, review
Dragonero Senzanima, as mentioned, is the story of an intense period in the life of Ian Aranill. After leaving the safety of his father's abode, young Ian, following a quarrel with his paternal grandfather, ran away from home in search of adventures, joining a mercenary company. One of the best known, that of Greevo Senzanima (hence the name of the necklace). This choice of the young Aranill becomes a focal point of his story, not only from the narrative point of view of the saga named after him, but as a human and emotional evolution.
Senzanima Dragonero: Victims, the weight of choices
The choice to embark on this adventure, to fight one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the Erondarian Empire will play a fundamental role in the definition of future personality of Ian Aranill. Adolescence is that period in which the dreams and naive certainties of childhood are finally confronted with reality, one is forced to see the world with different eyes and learn that outside the safe boundaries of the family circle and home there are adversities and obstacles to live and overcome, on the way to becoming adults. In comics, this universal passage has always been one of the most analyzed and used themes, just think of the X-Men, but the way in which Vietti and Enoch have decided to tell us about this phase of Ian's growth is felt and alive, capable of exploiting the setting and its narrative dictates to enhance what are experiences that we can share with the young protagonist.Dragonero Senzanima: Victims, even though they are placed in a violent and cynical context of war, is no exception. The lessons Ian is learning about the bloody battlefields of the military campaign against Merovia are a metaphor for the life experiences we experience in adolescence. Obviously, Ian learns the truth of the world, or rather of his world, according to the rules of the Erondar, but what makes him similar to us is the inner contrast between who he was and who he is becoming, the complex and often heartbreaking realization that they are dynamics in the adult world that go, if not accepted, at least understood.
And often, this understanding arises from witnessing something that, even though we feel it is wrong in the depths of the soul, we cannot do without to accept. Which is what happens to Ian in Soulless Dragonero: Victims.
During an assault on an enemy post, Ian and his comrades in arms are forced to face a bloody battle, from which they are saved only at the last chance the use of magic. Many are the wounded, including Carogna, one of the Senzanima, with whom Ian often has a conflictual relationship; the cynical mercenary, in fact, suffers a bad wound in his leg, so serious that the doctor of the mercenary company fears he will have to amputate the limb.
A doubt that Carogna does not like, who, frightened by this eventuality, loses his control and a gesture of frightened fury kills the doctor. Without medical support, the Senzanima have to run for cover and turn their attention to the Black Deer doctor, Homar Vahler, considered one of the best in the entire army. Forced to cure the Carrion, when Greevo tries to enlist him in his own company, Homar refuses, knowing the fame of the Senzanima, but it is not easy to refuse an invitation from Greevo Senzanima.
To convince the good doctor, Greevo has not scruples and sends Ian, Avedis and Troll to the doctor's house, in order to retrieve something familiar for Homar and terrorize him for the fate of his own family. And here, you hear the first sign of an impending tragedy.
Who are the real victims?
Without going further to avoid unpleasant spoilers, one can only say that once again Ian is he will have to deal with his own conscience. The actions that the young man is forced to perform under the command of Greevo are less and less close to his nature, and often, as in Dragonero Senzanima: Victims, it seems that fate is raging against the boy. When the perfidy of the human soul does not think about it, mocking fate is put into it, but in any case Ian is constantly put to the test.Vietti, author of the story and screenplays of Dragonero Senzanima: Vittime, has no qualms about keeping on the path traced by the series. As before, Ian's experience is traumatic, built with a precision in narrative timing that allows the reader to fully breathe the protagonist's torments and anxieties. The tragic event on which this story revolves comes at the moment of maximum emotional tension, it explodes in a situation that hits the reader hard, ready for tragedy, thanks to the punctual narrative rhythm, but who finds himself having to manage a surprising emotional variety. br>
This is because, as happened for the other volumes of the series, Dragonero Senzanima: Vittime has in its very title a key that is anything but trivial. As easy as it may seem to identify who the victims are in this tragedy, it should also be considered that there may be more souls lost in a similar drama. Like Avedis, an elf with a long life who has experienced traumatic experiences in his life (as told in Dragonero Senzanima: Jungle), who tries to drown the wounds of the soul in wine and dissolute conduct. What happens in this volume sees him directly responsible, but we cannot but ask ourselves what lies behind that cynical and apparently apathetic air of his.
On the other hand, as Ian replies to Avedis himself during a hard confrontation:
"I wouldn't want to live that long anyway ... if I have to see certain things ..."
But at the very end, a gesture by Avendis seems to indicate that this arrogant and cynical elf also has ghosts that corrode the soul.
In all of this, one would wonder how Ian can still endure certain things. We met an adult Dragonero, an authentic hero in the classic sense of the term, but Dragonero Senzanima shows us a boy who has nothing heroic at all, on the contrary at times he shows attitudes that are the polar opposite of the figure of the hero. A defect? A mistake by Vietti and Enoch? No, indeed, Dragonero Senzanima is providing us with something more than a hero: the man who will become the hero. In this phase of his life, Ian does not have a strong personality, he is constantly confronted with a violent world radically different from the one he grew up in, showing moments of courage that are a seed of what will become, but also situations in which the his adolescent spirit does not have the strength to bear the weight of certain events, being crushed by them. It might seem cowardice, but these are essential steps in his growth, it is the wealth of experience he is accumulating and will lead him to be the Dragonero we know.
Not surprisingly, in Dragonero Senzanima: Victims, one of the stories of the necklace that have the greatest impact on his sensitivity, Ian seeks refuge in a memory of home, resulting from an object found almost by the hand of fate. Vietti with Dragonero Senzanima: Vittime offers us a harrowing but essential reading to understand the character, helping us to understand some of the choices that an adult Ian makes in the monthly series.
And in doing so, Vietti always maintains a respect for experience emotional character, without forcing or betraying their original spirit. Whether it is the frightened fury of the Carogna or the adamantine and taciturn nature of the Troll, the continuity of Dragonero again finds strength not only in the events of the saga, but in the faces that populate it, faithful to themselves and capable of evolving showing new sides of the character that make them even more fascinating.
Portraying the tragedy
In support of Vietti, in Dragonero Senzanima: Vittime we have the drawings by Alessandro Vitti. Vitti beautifully interprets the emotional intensity of this story, creating muscular and dynamic tables in the fight scenes, but giving his best in realizing the most emotional and tragic moments of the story. The postures of the characters, the expressive range of the protagonists' faces and the gestural narration of his tables are important elements of his work in this volume, which reaffirms the high value of the Dragonero artistic cast.A team that can count on a master of coloring such as Paolo Francescutto. Francescutto has now accustomed us to impeccable and exciting colors, but with Dragonero Senzanima: Vittime he is able to raise the level of his work again. His chromatic vision embellishes every table of the volume, but the work done on the drawings of the battle on the bridge, when necromancy intervenes, is impressive, with an exciting use of green, used magnificently to convey the feeling of a miasma that seems to want to come out from the volume. I don't pay, Francescutto with his colors touches the reader's heart in the dramatic scene in which Ian leaves the house where the main event of the volume takes place.
Dragonero Senzanima: Victims is completed by the wonderful cover by Mario Alberti, the lettering by Marina Sanfelice and the editorial care by Luca Barbieri. Matteo Brembilla also deserves appreciation, who together with Marina Sanfelice and Luca Enoch took care of the graphic design of the volumes of Dragonero Senzanima.
With Dragonero the appointment is in these days on newsstands, with the release of the new register by Dragonero - The Rebel: Wanted! .
