Yen Press Update Okay a quick note. I have no idea what’s going on with Yen this month, titles that aren’t due for release till the 30th were released early, and titles due for release at the beginning of the month haven’t been released yet.

This review copy was kindly provided by Yen Press

About the Mangaka

Sadly I couldn’t find anything out about Lee YoungHee. If you have any info please drop me a line through the Contact Me page.

About the Manga

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To be honest I’m in two minds on this series now, I’m not sure if it’s really good, or just really bad.

Lee’s art is still as generic and uninteresting as it was in the previous volume. However it seems the great story she was building in the first volume has fallen flat.

The only thing that threw me, and made me go bug eye’s was finding out that Jay was a guy. Looking at volume one again, I still think he looks like a girl, especially since Korean series tend to go for flat chested girls. However everything about him is to effeminate to look at him as anything other than a girl.

This gets taken to a new level in this volume, almost to the point I’m wondering if
Lee is going to try mixing Yaoi and Shojo together. This could work well if she does it right, especially given the relationships that are hinted at between the the characters.

There is some development in Seung-Ha, however Nan-Woo is flat, so flat if she was standing sideways she’d disappear.

The friendships seem to have been killed off, and the rival love interest is so pathetic he’s dead before he even tries. Lee seems to be setting Chan-Gyu up as the second interest, but he’s even flatter than Nan-Woo. How he’s supposed to be a rival for Seung-Ha is beyond me, he couldn’t rival a limp lettuce leaf, never mind the schools prince charming.

What was even more disappointing was that there was more character development between Jay and Hyun-Ho than there was between any other pairing.

That was funny though, and I have to admit that pairing is what saved this volume for me. Jay is proven as a guy since he answers the door in a towel, err make that a handkerchief >.<

Hyun-Ho’s comments over that were so damned funny, though this and the subsequent scenes set Jay firmly in the brain dead section hehe

While I wasn’t expecting much from the art, I did have high hopes for the story, I was hoping that at least would be good, however Lee seems to have lost interest. The story she wrote this time was dull, with the exception of the Jay/Hyun-ho exchange it was so bad I wonder if she went on holiday and had a ghost writer do the writing >.<

looking at volume one and volume two, there are some not so subtle differences between the volumes. I doubt this is the case of course, but it’s the way it feels.

The extras, a side story, and studio news, are just as bad. There’s really nothing in this volume that can redeem it for me

Yen did their usual good job that I’ve come to expect from them. The translation is smooth and feels consistent.  The editing and lettering is good, with only a few guttering issues.

The question I ask myself now though, is if this series deserves to be on my essential read list? And  don’t think it does. Usually a single volume wouldn’t be enough to kill a series for me, however this one was so bad I just can’t see the subsequent volumes really making up for it. They’d all have to be works of art :(

It’s not bad enough to go on the junk pile just yet, but it’s hovering on the edge. If volume three ends up as bad as this one was, it’ll go in my Junk Pile.

Where to Buy

As always here’s the usual list of places to by.

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