About the Mangaka
Couldn’t find anything on Ryu Ryang sorry
About the Manga
I was hoping this collected version would make it easier to understand and follow, unfortunately it doesn’t.
I don’t really like the cover to much, however the colour panel inside is freaking awesome, though it’s hard to say whether its a boy or girl hehe.
The art isn’t bad per say, but at times I really don’t like it. Ji-Hae is like Be-Ri in Very Very Sweet, in other words deliberately drawn plain. So just like Be-Ri she’s a bit off. Her design would have been better if it was more natural. I understand the want to have a plain girl in the lead, but when you force it she just looks bad. More importantly she looks like a clone of other characters.
Mita is still going to take some getting used to, and I don’t really like his design, or his personality. He’s just to damned annoying to like. If I had him I’d throw him out with the trash no matter if he’s a heavenly beast or nor.
I do like Seung-Hyu, though my initial thought of him was pretty nasty. When he was reintroduced again I found myself warming to him.
However the big issue for me is that the story really doesn’t make any sense. Why was she so fixated on that one guy, and why was he so evil to her. Why if she wasn’t dead did she end where she does?
The volume is full of little odd things that don’t really help the flow of the story, and I couldn’t really get into it because of them niggling away.
The one thing I will compliment on is the designs for the clothing the characters use in this volume. I really love the traditional clothing we get to see, especially towards the end of the volume.
I also liked how the character designs improved over the volume, they became cleaner and sharper. Though a few of them made me chuckle with the chapped lips look.
Sadly I couldn’t get into this volume, while the art improved that’s all that did. The personalities of the characters weren’t really good enough to carry it through. Maybe this is one of those series that will be slow to start and get stronger as it progresses, but for now it’s a meh.
Yen Press did a great job, and they even went back to small translations of the SFX’s over larger english SFX’s. So there’s less clutter. That said there was a couple of times I had a hard time reading the text because it was merged with the back ground. A minor issue, but a niggling one.
I’m not going to judge this series yet, I’ll give it two more volumes before I make a decision. I do see some potential, but it all depends on whether Ryu can pull it out.
Where to Buy
