Many thanks to Yen Press for sending a review copy.
About the Mangaka
Nothing available on Song Yang sadly. Please drop me a line if you know anything!!
About the Manga
I have no idea what the hell is going on anymore. this volume confused the hell out of me due to a catalogue of flaws.
I was hoping for a continuation of the first volume, which I did enjoy. However this volume fails epically, for me at least.
The art is, on the one hand, as good as in the first volume. We have some excellent sprawling sketches that are genuinely awesome to look at. However it has a huge flaw, there is a huge inconsistency in the female character designs this volume.
Mi Lan is a prime example of this, over the course of the volume she has several face lifts, which I found irritating. Yes she is drawn well, but the changes in art art are confusing.
There are some amazing drawings in this volume that made it worth struggling through though. Song Yang is an excellent artist, he has a talent for drawing bust pictures so well you’d easily think them to be black and white photo’s at first glance.
That was another thing I didn’t like in the art this volume, there are three panels that are photo’s, and they look horrendous. It would have been better if he had drawn his own version of them. They didn’t come out to well in the tankobon.
For me though the biggest flaw is the story, it flows like treacle going up hill, and makes no sense at times. It’s made worse by him trying to add a fantasy element to it, by having the main character (who is telling the story) admitting he doesn’t remember thing right, and doesn’t even remember the sequence they happened in.
This leads to a confusing story with some huge holes in it. For example in one panel he says she (Mi Lan) didn’t sleep over, then on the next page says she did. It’s these types of inconsistencies that cause the story to stumble.
However it’s not just there, the personality changes in the characters are a bit to weird for me. While I can understand the initial changes in Xiaojun, it goes from falling out to rape, with no really connecting point. Then to throw a curve he says he wasn’t even sure he raped the right girl.
I’ve read this volume through a few times now and I still can’t get a grasp on it, and while the rape at the end is none explicit, as I we don’t see anything, I didn’t like the way it ended up there. I don’t think the ending would feel so wrong if the there had been another volume to explain the changes better.
Yen Press did their usual good job on this, the volume is the same size as their manhwa line, so is slightly oversized. There are no extras in this volume, unlike the last one. Just the usual adverts for other titles. No guttering problems, and they included a lot of explanations on dates and other elements. Which while not essential, are always a welcome addition.
Sadly, I can not add this to my Essential Read List, though it’s not bad enough to get on my Junk Pile. I would recommend the first volume, which can be read stand alone.
Where to Buy
