It was teatime again.
The Queen and Princess Louise sat at the table, sipping tea as they read the comics before them.
After finishing her comic, the Queen set it aside and looked at Louise. Although her expression remained fairly composed, there was a gleam of excitement in her eyes, and she was turning the pages quite quickly.
A little while later, Louise finished the comic, closed her eyes, and took a long, deep breath.
"What do you think, Louise?"
"It exceeded my expectations, Mother."
Princess Louise looked at Her Majesty the Queen and spoke.
"Sir Li Wei's comic this time feels truly... breathtaking."
That was only natural. For Betty the Puppy, Li Wei had used a four-panel slice-of-life format. Often, he needed nothing more than a few characters interacting, without even a background. But Iron Legion was completely different. Li Wei had drawn heavily on the style of shonen manga, with an emphasis on a powerful sense of motion and tremendous visual impact.
Most paintings in this era were static. Although Li Wei drew his comics in black and white, his use of different lines conveyed the feeling of Mecha charging forward. The arcs traced by the Chimeras' swinging arms also made it easy to imagine what those monsters looked like in motion.
"I think that before long, everyone will want to pilot a Mecha."
Remembering how every household had wanted a dog during the Betty the Puppy craze, Louise could not help making that observation. The Mecha in Iron Legion simply looked too cool, and Li Wei's industrial aesthetic was perfectly suited to the tastes of the Empire's people. Although he had left the pages uncolored as always, the weight and texture of those Mecha in black and white made readers' blood surge.
Even Louise had felt fired