Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a review copy.

About the Mangaka

It’s really frustrating from a reviewers perspective at just how little information there is available, in english, for Korean Manhwa-ga. 

If you have any information on Ha SiHyun , please drop me a message through the Contact Me page.

About the Manga

To be honest, out of all the Korean titles I’ve reviewed this month, this is the one I was least expecting much from. Hence my slow review, I had some personal stuff going on and decided to handle that first rather than the review. (would have been a different matter for say With the Light or something)

Yet, much to my surprise this is by far the best of the titles I’ve reviewed, on several levels.

Ha’s art is typical Korean, yet it’s sharper, bolder and cleaner that normal. Most Korean I’ve read are light and airy, but Ha’s is different, very strong and bold. this is great as it gives the manga a heavier feel, and it reads a lot more easily.

Like a lot of manhwa’s this one has it’s share of chibi/comic moments Ha’s are neither ugly nor over used. In fact I found I loved her (I’m assuming Ha is a woman) use of chibi’s.

If there’s one area she does however drop the ball, it’s in the same area that all manhwa-ga and manga-ka seem to do. The characters are two thin some of them are insanely thin and I wonder how they don’t get snapped by the wind. However this is the only thing I have an issue with.

The colour story at the beginning is bloody funny “How to tame a boyfriend” had me in fits of laughter. It’s just to damned funny, and so right in a weird way.

Sadly I haven’t read the first two volumes, and I’m broke now (just spent £200buying OOP! manga on eBay!!) for the month, so volumes one and two are on the buy list for next month.

However the story flow in this volume is strong and consistent, and even without reading the first two volumes I was able to follow reasonably well, with just a few questions.

The characters that Ha has created in this series are interesting, especially Alice, who I really liked.

Oddly, this series uses western names for a lot of the characters, it took me by surprise at first since I was expecting Korean ones. And I have to admit, if I didn’t know Yen Press better, I’d assume that they changed the names, as some publishers still do.

I’m looking forward to seeing how things carry on, especially now it seems a love rival is starting to come out. Though I have to admit the pace that happened was a off, would have been better to allow a more natural pace I think. Still it was fun to see Patrick beat up Edward, he got on my nerves a page after he was introduced hehe

This series is another to come from IceK originally, and as with all those titles, Yen Press have kept it  to the large size. For once guttering isn’t a huge problem, though there is a few small bits.

The translation is smooth, and consistent, however the fail a bit on the editing. Once again we have huge speech bubbles with little letters inside, and at others little letters pushed into a corner leaving a load of wasted space..

The fact they left the colour pages in though wins them huge points with me. I still get peeved over publishers who leech the colour from them.

Overall, it’s another superb release from Yen Press, and I have no qualms about adding this to my Essential read list. This title has everything a good manga needs.

Where to Buy

This title isn’t release until the 12th August 2008

For the Brits: Waterstones, Little Brown, Book Depository

For the Yanks and Canadians: Amazon.com and Amazon.ca