Sitting somewhere between Manga, a comic book, and a freemium app, The True Masters Chronicles is a bold step in distribution and content for the medium.  Telling a tale out of a feudal Japanese setting, a region of eight districts protected by leaders of shrines is under attack by a ninth “Shadow” region.  The son of the last free shrine has come home from the greater war to see his father, the head of the shrine, who lies on his death bed.  With only the respect that the Elephant God, leader of the dark faction, has for his father standing in the way of his taking the last free temple, our young reluctant hero sets out to find a way to beat back the darkness.

Chester Jones III has a good handle on the story he wants to tell, but he’s willing to take his time in laying things out, letting the story breathe and immerse us in the world that Maike Wender draws for us.  The style tends toward Manga, utilizing an eastern style to tell what amounts to an eastern story. I do have to say that the female costumes are a bit . . . well, typical for the style, but I always like to see folks maybe move up from the standard in that regard.  That’s not to say that the visuals weren’t awesome, just that most of the costumes, for the most part, seemed very true to the time period. There’s just one character who seems quite removed from that aesthetic.  What I was able to review was the content available without the upgrade, andthere are a lot of interesting threads tying this work together, and it seems that things heat up just past that point.  Anyone who’s a fan of Inuyasha, Samurai Champloo, or any of the countless Samurai Manga will find themselves loving this story and being entertained by the added content throughout.

I think that this is a very cool first step for someone creating content on a new platform.  The team was able to put up pages at a time and allow their development to live and move without having to punish themselves with artificial deadlines, letting them share in not only the story but also the creation of the work itself.  As a first outing, there are some things I would question, like keeping the creators’ bios behind the paywall. It seems like that would be the kind of info that would draw folks more into the world that they’re trying to create.  That being said, I think there’s an incredible amount of their great content available for free, and certainly enough to justify paying these folks for their work, so that they can continue to bring this and other stories to life in this way.  Creators need to be rewarded for their ability to bring us these great stories, and there’s a LOT of content here to enjoy.  I’m interested to see more of the videos and the behind-the-scenes work on this project.  I would recommend this very highly for the iPad, and with a little zoom work does a great job on the iPhone, as well.  Hopefully, they’ll branch out to the Google Play Store soon to show more folks the value of this unique and groundbreaking system.

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