(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)
LOVE SOS is a pretty interesting manhwa that somehow starts its story in Japan, just like Very! Very! Daisuki that I read two days ago. I’m starting to get a sense of how Korean manhwa is different from a Japanese manga… According to Wikipedia’s entry on manhwa, Korean manhwa reveals more Asian traits and has more realistic hair styles. I'm not sure about the first point, but I must agree that the manhwa characters tend to have more hair lines. That difference should be an interesting change for a regular mangaworm. There are several really well-drawn scenes, where Dan-bi looks really fierce or pretty pretty, but mostly I had hard time connecting the characters' Caucasian look with their Korean ethnicity (maybe thinner eyelashes may make them look more Korean).
(SPOILER)
Volume 1 starts with a cheesy scene involving Dan-bi and her mother, in which it is revealed that they’re a yakuza’s family (dad is also Korean). Other gangs’ bigotry against Dan-bi and her Korean gang has got her into a lot of fights, so the mother pleads her daughter to not fight again. I started thinking that LOVE SOS must be a cheap manhwa with a terrible storyline and a bunch of fight scenes, but I found a pretty exciting duel develop by the end of the first chapter. All the violence would eventually lead to Danbi's loss of both of her eyes and her moving to Korea, where she is hospitalized. I thought that Dan-bi would remain blind for the rest of the series, but the medical know-how’s had advanced enough in the story that she could get a new pair of eyes. For the first few days, Dan-bi’s vision is bleary, and this is when she gets visited by all these handsome boys (for various reasons…. it seems that one of them had already met her by the Han River when she was getting harassed by some strangers). I think Danbi's loss of vision makes a good plot (as long as she can get it back) b/c love has a lot to do with one's vision; Danbi's handicap means that we readers have to speculate who the visitors were, and, even after Dan-bi’s vision is fully restored, Danbi is able to make playful jokes to people around her who still think that she is blind. Another interesting turn in the plot is that Dan-bi gets invited over by her relatives. Her cousin, Maehyang, promises to make Dan-bi into “a woman that can be loved,” (ew) and, surprisingly, Dan-bi seems interested by the end of the volume.
- Visual quality: 7/10
- General plot: 8/10
- Comedy elements: 4/5
- Action elements: 3/4
- Romance elements: 3/5
- Mystery elements: 2.5/3
- Realness: 6/7 (degree of less fakeness & cheezy time-wasting scenes)
Overall: 
(7.6/10)
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