About the Mangaka
Not a lot of info available on Lee Eun, and what is available seems to be conflicting. According to Wikipedia Lee is a film director, though there is no mention of this in the brief biography available at the front of this volume.
Her other manhwa include: Monica, The Eye of the Dragon and The Rebellion of the 36°Cs
About the Manga
For a final volume of a series, this has got to be one of the weirdest I’ve seen for a long time.
I love the cover of this volume, it’s bright and alive. Sadly the actual cover is a bit faded compared to the image above, and the colours look a bit washed out. However it still has that warmth to it that makes it a good cover.
Like the previous volume I have issues with some of the inner art, which just doesn’t look or feel right. However there are also times when the art looks amazing, and has a real depth and atmosphere to it.
I find it a real shame that the art is so inconsistent through out this last volume. Though as I said, some art is great, especially in the later part of the volume when we get some traditional clothing. These are stunning, though short lived.
A lot of the weird art feels deliberate though, and while I can by some of it, others I can not.
Not really much else to say on the art that I haven’t said before, so I wont repeat myself.
Where this volume really lost me however was the story. The beginning of the volume carries on from where the last volume leaves off. But the events are carried out in a fast pace, which frankly left me wondering, yet again, what the hell was going on.
The first part of the story sort of makes sense, and yet doesn’t. Even after rereading the previous volume. While parts of it made sense, some key parts, didn’t. The next part feels really weird, and again while it made some sense parts of it really didn’t.
However I did like the the back story in the second part. Watching it play out was certainly interesting, and I like how elements of Korean historical beliefs were worked into the story.
However here’s where the story gets weird, as elements are revealed that to me don’t make any sense. The ending, sort of makes sense, and I have to admit I felt a bit sad over the ending. However the bits that came next really didn’t make sense, since it felt like it was contradicting what it had just said.
Maybe part of the problem is that I haven’t read the first few volumes, I’m still holding off waiting for the Yen Press re-release, but I’ll probably end up buying the IceK releases in the hope that the begging volumes will help me make sense of this series ending.
There was some minor guttering in this volume, but it wasn’t to bad, and certainly not enough to damage the spine. The translation was smooth and flowed well with no errors. The fonts and editing in this volume were good as well, with it it being easy to read and follow, with no miss-aligned text.
As it stands at the moment this title is on my Essential Read List, however I’m no longer sure it belongs there. Once I’ve read the missing volumes I’ll make a decision, but I am hoping that it ends up making sense.
However despite the issues I have with this series, it was a great read, and I did enjoy the individual stories. It’s definitely a series I would recommend.
Where to Buy
April 2, 2010 @ 13:47.
Regarding wiki, I’m under the impression that the author just has a very ‘common’ name, and as wiki only has one Lee Eun on file it redirects to the film director.
Lee Eun (the author of Antique Gift Shop) is written as 이은.
I have no idea how the director is spelt. I haven’t been able to find that. From attempting to look this up though, theres a Lee Eun who is an actress too (written the same way), and quite a number of Lee Eun-somethings (with hyphonated or separated romanised names). There are even two of those amongst the manhwaga that have stuff translated in English (이은혜 or Lee Eunhye – the author of Netcomic’s Pine Kiss, and 이은영 or Lee Eun-Young – the author of Tokyopop’s Saver) and they both use the same characters too.
Furthermore, if I’m reading the wiki article on the korean surname Lee correctly, the 이 spelling of Lee is the second most common surname in korea anyway.