Comments on: Let Dai, Vols. 1-15

By: Recommendations for NETCOMICS Sale! | There it is, Plain as Daylight

Recommendations for NETCOMICS Sale! | There it is, Plain as Daylight — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:31:51 +0000

[...] sale offers a veritable treasure trove of fantastic reads–gloriously melodramatic epics like Let Dai and Totally Captivated, emotionally stirring one-shot U Don’t Know Me (written by the same [...]

By: there it is, plain as daylight. » Let’s Talk About Manhwa

there it is, plain as daylight. » Let’s Talk About Manhwa — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:17:15 +0000

[...] reviewed so far has been BL manhwa (and by “most” I mean “three”): Let Dai and Totally Captivated, both from NETCOMICS, and One Thousand and One Nights from Yen Press. All of [...]

By: Melinda Beasi

Melinda Beasi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:16:54 +0000

@Lianne Sentar – 1.) Violence begets violence and 2.) GET YOUR TETANUS BOOSTER SHOTS.

Lianne, that made me laugh out loud!

By: Lianne Sentar

Lianne Sentar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:36:17 +0000

Oh, and despite all the various issues presented in Let Dai – dealing with rape, dealing with violence, homophobia, misogyny, forgiveness, revenge – I like how there are only two real overarching themes in the comic that Won is clearly preaching: 1.) Violence begets violence and 2.) GET YOUR TETANUS BOOSTER SHOTS.

By: Lianne Sentar

Lianne Sentar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:33:12 +0000

Haha! Yeah, Yooneun sucks, I think we all agree. ^_^ The fact that she’s female and wallows in a lot of negative female traits can turn off a female reader, certainly, even if Yooneun isn’t representative of all girls in the comic. Personally, I LOVE the antagonism between her and Dai. It scares the crap out of me. After how clear he’s made it that he hates her and REALLY hates her with Jaehee, she keeps turning up at the wrong places, and you can just feel his rage converting into violence as he storms up. It always made me want to scream at Yooneun to run as far away as possible. ^_^ But that’s why I like the comic, and I why I really like Dai as a character. The story is just this slow-churning cauldron of negativity that suddenly boils over into terrifying violence, then settles again, then calms, then boils over again even faster. Most shoujo wouldn’t dare to even SCRAPE the issues Let Dai dives headfirst into, and I love that. Yeah, Melissa – I can see how the misogyny will upset some readers. And Connie, you’re totally right that the violence can do the same. But if a reader can stomach those things, they make sense in the context of the comic and help make it the unique work of art that it is.

By: Melinda Beasi

Melinda Beasi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:39:22 +0000

@Connie – Connie, you’ve made some really fantastic points here, on both sides of the question, really. I’m very torn on the subject of Eunhyung’s strength. I think she’s an incredibly relatable character, and really well-written, but I wish Won had let her triumph in the end. I can’t be more clear than that without putting huge spoilers in these comments, but I hope you’ll understand what I mean. Yooneun, though… well, there’s a reason she never even really made it into the review, despite playing such a big role in the series. I agree, she’s written to be disliked, and though it wasn’t your intent at all, I think listening to you talk about her has strengthened my resolve regarding my misogyny accusations. Heh. I’m not suggesting that female characters should always be likeable, because that would be ridiculous, but I do think she’s positioned as a weak sort of villain due to her ceaseless pursuit of Jaehee, even after it’s clear that he loves someone else, and that this is unfortunate. I think she could have been written as a less pathetic character and still served as a “rival” from Dai’s skewed perspective, and it would have removed quite a bit of what reads (to me) as misogyny in the series. I think you’ve unintentionally put your finger right on it for me, actually. Part of what makes it seem like Dai’s attitudes towards women *might* reflect the author’s, is that by writing Yooneun the way she did, Won makes some of Dai’s feelings about Yooneun seem almost justifiable. All this said, I still really enjoyed this series, and I hope that’s clear.

By: Connie

Connie — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:18:01 +0000

I should also add that I think the misogynistic tone in the beginning might be a deal-breaker for some people, because there’s nothing to balance out Dai’s assault on Yooneun or Eunhyung’s gang-rape in the first volume. My biggest problem with the series is actually the violence, since it was initially very off-putting for me, and I can imagine it turning off a lot of potential readers. Let Dai wouldn’t be nearly as effective without it though, so I can’t say I would have it any other way.

By: Connie

Connie — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:09:53 +0000

You raise some good points, Lianne. I thought about it a little more… Dai is pretty bad, and I kind of agree with Melinda that there is a slightly misogynistic tone to the series because of that, but it’s more because there is just so much of Dai, and we see so much of his behavior that it can be hard to look past it to the other characters sometimes, regardless of how Dai or anyone else is portrayed.

I thought about the other characters some. I like what you said about Jaehee doing his best by the girls, because that is 100% true, and I think that Eunhyung was a pretty strong and realistic character. The portrayal of Yooi’s stuck-up female friends and Dai’s mother occurred to me, but for every female background character cast into a stereotype, there were males playing out the same roles, and there were a lot more male thugs than female (plus, the female gang members supported one another in a way that the male ones did not). And there was no counter for Miss Jin, who was also a pretty great character.

Thinking about it, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Yooneun, though. She winds up being the main female character, and while she is strong (she has no problems telling off classist snobs, or even Dai, for that matter), she does have a lot of negative female stereotypes. She’s clingy and possessive of Jaehee, long after it’s made clear that she will never be his lover. She has that ridiculous promise with Yooi that she finally uses in the most selfish way possible. And she is probably guilty of using Eunhyung as a tie to Jaehee, as Dai points out, but I find that really hard to fault her for. All these things make it extremely easy for a female audience to dislike Yooneun, I think. On the other hand, none of these are fatal flaws or really all that sexist (with the possible exception of the Yooi’s promise thing), and they are even reflected, in pretty much every case, in other characters.

You sort of made me realized just how well-balanced all the characters are, and I can enjoy the series that much more because of it now ^_^

By: Melinda Beasi

Melinda Beasi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:28:00 +0000

@Lianne Sentar - Yes, that does make sense, and admittedly that's why I kind of wrote a disclaimer into the review, by calling it borderline misogynistic, and mentioning that I knew the kind of assumption I was making could easily be unfair. I think the reason why I think there's a good chance Won expects us to find Dai sexy all around (including the woman-hating) is because Jaehee does, and I feel that we're meant to identify with Jaehee. Jaehee doesn't approve of Dai's treatment of/attitudes toward women, but it also doesn't affect his feelings for Dai. He's willing to accept that as a truth about Dai, and there's some level on which that bothers me. Not enough to stop reading the story, obviously (which also bothers me a little, if I'm being honest), but enough that I felt compelled to mention it while reviewing.

By: Lianne Sentar

Lianne Sentar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:59:27 +0000

Melinda –

Don’t worry about examples – I agree with you that Dai hates women. My question is do you think that makes the WORK misogynist? Dai is very sexy aesthetically, but he is NINE KINDS OF CRAZY, and therefore I don’t think Won was trying to present him as the “sexy bad boy all girls have crushes on.” Dai is a beautiful, rabid wolf in a society of lambs, and his beauty just makes him more invasive and thus more dangerous. If he hates women, that’s just part of his character…I don’t think there was an overarching misogynist message or anything. In fact, the comic establishing Dai’s misogyny and then having him follow through with that (beating girls senseless, etc.) gives the girls credibility as people and characters within the work, because most works for girls would give girls “special treatment” at the cost of character/plot integrity in order to not offend the readers’ sensibilities. (Example: Fushigi Yuugi wanted to deal with the terrors of rape, but then never had the girls actually raped.) In Let Dai, girls are characters, Dai hates them because that’s part of who he uniquely is, he doesn’t spare them when he’s in a rage, and the girls have to deal with that violence. That’s…well, that could even be argued as feminist. Female characters being spared a misogynist’s fists for the sole fact that they’re females and the majority of readers are female is a bit of a cop-out, and also mildly sexist, in a way. Does that make sense?