This week, Melinda reviews volumes four and five of Comic, an entertaining manhwa from Yen Press; Connie weighs in on the final volume of the boy band saga, Do Whatever You Want, from NETCOMICS; Grant takes a look at volume six of the supernatural tale Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbun (Viz); and Michelle revisits Papillon (Del Rey) with a look at its second volume.
By Ha SiHyun
Published by Yen Press
Rating: Teen
Spunky high school student Alice Song wants to be a manhwa artist and is thrown suddenly into the professional world when she wins third prize in a national contest held by a popular magazine. Alice’s excitement quickly dims once she realizes how far she really has to go, but she finds encouragement from an unexpected source—Patrick “Saturn” Kang, an arrogant, moody professional who happens to attend the all-boys high school next to hers. Their initial encounters are less than successful, but after quite a number of arguments, mishaps, and misunderstandings, Patrick agrees to take Alice on as his assistant to help her improve her craft.
In volume three, with Alice’s girlhood crush, Mr. Hwang, temporarily out of the picture, it looked like Alice and Patrick might finally figure out they like each other, but as volume four begins, Alice’s manipulative friend Daria has decided she wants Patrick for herself and begins scheming to push Alice out of the way. It takes nearly two volumes for Patrick to see through Daria’s designs and decide to confess his feelings for Alice, but even then, Daria manages to get the upper hand and twist things her way, leaving Alice devastated by the end of volume five.
Despite the drama and anticipation of Patrick’s confession, volumes four and five hit a low point in the series. Though the romantic leads are both appealing and it’s fun to watch them discover their feelings for each other, Daria’s outrageous machinations are just plain tedious and steal too much focus from the story’s real appeal—Alice’s journey to becoming a professional manhwa-ga—which is all but invisible in these volumes.
With its energetic, attractive art and idiosyncratic characters, Comic has the potential to be both entertaining and romantic while also offering an enticing glimpse into the world of aspiring young manhwa artists. Hopefully over the next few chapters it can pull itself out of the romantic dregs and restore the balance that made its early volumes so much fun.
Volumes four and five of Comic are available now.
–Reviewed by Melinda Beasi
By Yeri Na
NETCOMICS, 190 pp.
Rating: 13+
Things wrap up in this volume as Jinwon, Iljae, Hosoo, Juni, Dana, and Soomin approach their senior year and get their various demons under control. Iljae and Jinwon make a decision on what to do about Baby Mode after Juni publicly stirs up all the corruption in the production company and the group has to deal with a new manager. Jinwon also has to come to an agreement with his family, who is in favor of dragging him against his will to America. Meanwhile, Hosoo has to decide whether to reconcile with his father.
I actually like this series a lot simply because, while there are a lot of series about girls becoming professional singers and actors and whatnot, this is the only series I can think of that deals with boy bands. The other reason I liked reading this was the slightly different way it dealt with relationship between characters. While it is, for all intents and purposes, a boys’ love series with a strong relationship between Jinwon and Hosoo, it also sort of panders to the reader in unique ways, because their relationship isn’t such a strong focus that you couldn’t imagine Jinwon and Iljae together, as those two also have a lot of friendly moments. And for that matter, the girls are never written out entirely, so if you aren’t into the boys, you can imagine Jinwon-Dana and Hosoo-Soomin pairings for the ending.
The ending was a little disappointing only because it pretty much wraps up all the loose ends as far as the controversies goes, and then… it just ends. There’s nothing about the Baby Mode comeback, nothing about Hosoo’s music career, and nothing about what the characters are doing even a year after they leave college. It actually leaves the main couple in a very bad place relationship-wise too, which is really weird. I kind of hate open endings like this because I always imagine they are written with the readers in mind, since absolutely no fan will be let down. On the other hand, this series is better than any other I’ve seen at juggling the relationships, so it gets points for that, at least.
Volume seven of Do Whatever You Want is available online at NETCOMICS.com. If you’re not into reading on the web, the first three volumes are also available in print editions.
–Reviewed by Connie C.
Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbun, Vol. 6
By Shin Mashiba
Viz Media, 184 pp.
Rating: Teen
The problem with manga that offer short story arcs is that the non-recurring characters never have any substance to them. This problem plagues Nightmare Inspector in half the chapters of volume six. All of the clients can be described (completely) in a single sentence, each. There is a girl who knows that someone is watching her and a pretty girl who is afraid of losing her beauty. I would say that it is completely impossible for any reader to become invested in those characters.
Also, Hiruko is really bad at what he does. He misreads dreams and then lets his clients leap to their own conclusions, which is frequently fatal for the dreamer. Then Hiruko simply shrugs it off and moves on with his life without expressing a shred of guilt.
The art is easy on the eyes, especially the panels devoted to Hiruko putting the people to sleep so he can enter their nightmares. Watching him use his cane to open up the divide between the dream world and the real world brought a smile to my face whenever it occurred.
An appearance by Hiruko’s only friend and a chapter devoted to the background story of the Baku who passed his legacy on to Hiruko hint that the story might take on a more unified plot structure in future releases. This volume, however, leaves a lot to be desired.
Volume six of Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbun is available now.
–Reviewed by Grant Goodman
By Miwa Ueda
Del Rey, 192 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)
Shy Ageha has long dwelled in the shadow of her beautiful and popular twin sister, Hana. With help from her school’s new guidance counselor, however, she’s begun to transform herself. In this volume, she reconciles with her mother after years of feeling that her parents preferred Hana and even moves on romantically when she realizes that her feelings for Ryûsei might not actually be love.
Papillon is a pretty fun series, and I definitely enjoy seeing family issues get some attention in a manga. The reconciliation between Ageha and her mother is a bit too easily achieved, but when’s the last time you saw a shojo manga heroine enjoy a nice warm hug with her mother? Not often, I’d wager.
On the negative side, I can’t help but feel that the actions of Ichijiku-san, the counselor, are incredibly inappropriate. He has groped Ageha a couple of times (apparently accidentally) and playfully made pretend advances upon her that would get him fired about a hundred times over in the real world. It takes me out of the story that he’s doing these things and is seemingly unconcerned about the occupational repercussions.
What I liked best about volume one—the relationship between Hana and her scheming sister—takes a backseat in this volume, but the way Hana lurks about looking furious as Ageha reconnects with her parents suggests there’ll be more sisterly strife in the future, which is all the reason I need to read on.
Volume two of Papillon is available now.
–Reviewed by Michelle Smith
Recent Comments