Review copy kindly provided by Yen Press

About the Mangaka

Kara is the name of a manwha-ga-duo: Yoon-Gyeong Kim & Eun-Sook Jeong. And to quote them, their name comes from the Hebrew word for ‘to invite’.

Kim and Jeong first met each other when they both were in their fourth year of university, working together as assistants for the manhwa-ga Eun-Young Hong.
They made their debut in 2000, when their short story “Terra” (which you can find in DD Volume 1) won a prize at the “1st CAKE Manhwa Contest”. On June 15th that year, they began to publish “Mawang Ilgi” in the Manhwa Magazine CAKE.

(copied from Demon Daze)

About the Manga

angeldiary_8

This volume was awesome, I really got into it and the ending is a hell of a cliff hanger (literally). However I do find myself with a burning question: Why the hell is this called Angel Diary??

Can’t explain it, but for some reason I found KARA’s art in this volume awesome. There’s no change from the previous volumes, but there was something about the art in this volume that just clicked with me. Even Dong-Young didn’t annoy me as much as it has previously.

There were several pages in this volume that really showed KARA’s skill to the max, one of them a full double page spread, and what’s more they’re black and white!! Sadly I didn’t think much of the color pages this time. Sure the cover art is nice, as it usually is. However the insert art this time was a bit weak. One of the best bits of art though for me is at the very end, just after the volume end, there’s a blank page with a little Ryung chibi character on it. It just looks so damned cute.

Story wise we get a little action, but it’s mostly back story on the relationship between Se-In and Ryung. Which to be honest I really liked. As it unfolded it helped me to understand the personalities better, and the depths of the trust they have in each other. Other aspects of the story are revealed as well, some of which are a bit shocking.

The end of the volume had me cursing, because of the cliff hanger, I really want to know what happens next.

However I find myself drawn back to my initial question: Why the hell is this called Angel Diary!!??

Everything I’ve seen so far, including this volume, is done from the view of the demons. Surely if it’s called Angel Diary it should be from the Angel’s point of view. Sure we do see a little of the Angel’s, but not enough IMO to justify the title.

Yen Press did an awesome job on this volume, hardly any guttering (with the exception of the double page spreads). The translation was smooth and consistent which is to be expected with Yen Press.

Sadly, this is one of the titles they acquired from IceK, which means that volume nine (the next one to be released) is the end of their license run. Yen have been trying to acquire the rest of the series, (and all the other they got when they took over IceK). No news on those yet sadly :(

While I really liked this volume, the fact that it’s incomplete is a huge issue for me, and as such I can’t add it to my Essential Read list. However I have to admit after reading all of Yen’s releases through together, if the series was still available I would have no issues about adding it to my list.

Where to Buy

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