Synopsis:
Teen girls rewrite the universe on a daily basis! This comic collection proves there’s nothing better than using your imagination… except maybe talking nonsense with your friends. Hey, why not both?
Nathalie and Marie are 17 years old and best friends. Since elementary school, they’ve been creatively filling moments of boredom with a game called “What If We Were…?”. One player names a topic — let’s say “vampire slayers” for example — and then both imagine what life would be like as that subject. “I would only hunt vampires during daytime, because it would be less exhausting” would be a good answer. “I would only hunt them for sport, to eventually sell their skins” could be another, if a little disturbing.
Easy to play, but hard to master. An expert player will know how to think outside the box and surprise their opponent. And after all these years, Nathalie and Marie are experts!
Review:
What If We Were sounded right up my street. The concept of imaging yourself in random yet crazy situations sounds really fun. Unfortunately, the execution of it felt extremely half baked to me. I was expecting some type of actual story to happen between these ‘what if’ moments, but it was just one scenario after another and it got repetitive extremely quickly. The only ‘story’ you got was that one of the characters has a crush on someone but won’t talk about it.
Now, I’m not the best judge on whether or not this continues throughout the whole graphic novel as I got bored and decided to stop reading it halfway through. Which isn’t something I do very often with graphic novels. Due to their shorter length I can usually push through to the end but What If We Were just wasn’t entertaining me. Like at all. Even these crazy stupid situations the characters imagined fell flat. Maybe it was a translation issue as this is originally a French graphic novel?
One thing I did really like was the art style. It would sometimes change depending on what was happening in their made up scenarios and that was a really nice element. The cover is also really great and gets extra points as it’s the main style of the graphic novel.
Sadly, What If We Were was not for me, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. If you like graphic novels that are more a collection of short stories rather than one continuous plot, you will probably like this.
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