About the Mangaka

Kim Young-Oh’s first work was High School a 12 volumes action, comedy and shonen manhwa. Currently Kim is working on Ghost as illustrator with Oh Rae Balg Eum writer which started in 2006 and is ongoing. This is a seinen fantasy manhwa. The chapters are published in Booking anthology. As of October 2008, four volumes have been published.

About the Manga

I’m in two minds over this series, and while I’ll admit I enjoyed it, it was full of flaws that made it just a tad annoying to read.

Art wise I liked it, it was a refreshing change from the usual manhwa style art, though it did have a lot of the key characteristics of manhwa.

Kim is an excellent artist whose skill is really shown well in this series. Though at times it does fell a bit cramped, but that’s nothing new in this styled series. His character designs are great and really well developed right from the outset. This is unusual as I’ve found most mangaka require some time to settle into their new projects.

The story is great as well, and I have to admit that when I read the first volume I was hooked. Something about postmen getting the vengeance on people kinda made me chuckle.

The problem however lies in the delivery and the timing of the series. At first the story progresses at a good steady pace, but later on it’s as though he realises he’s running out of space and picks the pace up exponentially. This means the series ends up suffering the problem almost all short series has, it’s to rushed, and incomplete.

We go from postal man to insane killer almost immediately with no middle ground. Sure it’s done a lot better than in other series I’ve read, but it would have been better if it hadn’t needed to be done at all.

The first few volumes are filled with chapters that could have been easily removed, or better yet mixed into the main developments. Thus allowing Kim to show off Banya in both elements together. This has been done before, and when done well it’s excellent.

This in and of itself wouldn’t leave me feeling unsatisfied, the problem for me was in volume five when things are done so fast it’s annoying as hell. Kim wastes all of Banya’s development in the previous volumes, rather he throws it away and has a new hero turn up.

The whole antihero element would have been excellent if Kim had spent more time developing the character. However because of the overly fast pace of the volume you’re dragged along and don’t really get a chance to feel the characters.

What really kills it for me however was the ending, we get five volumes of build up, just to be told ‘aww okay, I’ll go back to bed and sleep’. I’ve seen some badly handled endings in my time, but this one is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It falls totally flat at the end.

I could have forgiven everything else if the ending had been handled better. This could only really have been done by extending the volume count another three or four volumes. There was so much left unsaid in the volumes that it’s hard to really say it’s a good series.

All of Kim’s excellent art and story is ruined by the wasted ending.

Dark Horse did a good job on this one however, the translation is smooth and consistent, but I have to admit I didn’t like the price tag, I felt it was unjustified. that’s nothing new since the vast majority of Dark Horses releases are on the higher end of the scale, and a lot of them don’t feel justified.

This barely scrapes being thrown in my Junk Pile, and only because I enjoyed the art, the story, and the action was well presented. However it falls a long way short of even being high on my recommendations because of they way it ends. Hopefully the anime version that’s being made will have a better ending.

Where to Buy

• Brits: Book Depository
• Yanks: Amazon.com
• Canadians: Amazon.ca