(In Korean: 궁)

(SPOILERS)

This time Chae-gyeong jokes over Shin's name by referring to his shoes, the Korean word for which is shin-bal (신발). "Shin... I like you a lot. Your smell is number 1!"

The couple stays at the wife's house for just few more days. There are several scenes that really show how pathetic the prince is... I just really hate him. He doesn't allow Chae-gyeong to extend her visit just a little longer, even though she cries and begs. When Chae-gyeong sleeps with her parents before their leave next morning, Shin gets really irritated because he's letting Chae-gyeong be a little happier. When they leave, he doesn't even allow her to say a proper good-bye to her parents by pushing Chae-gyeong into the car and raising the windows. Although the queen is willing to let Chae-gyeong visit her parents more often, Yi Shin intervenes and says something like, "I'm your husband, so I have the final say in wherever you go... It will depend on how well you carry out your Sejabin duties." (But he's planning to never allow Chae-gyeong to visit her family again.) It's enough to make Chae-gyeong tell him that he's gotten scary recently. I think that this complex psychology of Yi Shin can be best understood by reading a scene from Volume 2. He says that rich people who have always gotten everything in their life the way they wanted become unhappy when they see others having things that they can't get. For Yi Shin, it seems those things are normal life and family love.

There are more things in this volume, but I'll leave them to you to find out.

• Visual quality: 12/12
• General plot: 9.5/10
• Comedy elements: 5/6
• Action elements: 1/2
• Romance elements: 2.5/3
• Mystery elements: 3/3
• Sophistication: 6/6
• Realness: 6/6

Overall: (9.4/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

(In Korean: 궁)

(SPOILERS)

I read like 5 volumes already, so I kinda lost what Volume 2 is like. I skimmed through it again, so I think I'm ready to write this review... Volume 2 of Goong does contain bits of funny scenes here and there, but it mostly concerns Shin Chae-gyeong's home-sickness, anxiety about her marriage, and the feeling of alien-ness in the palace. Even if certain parts of the story don't humour you right on the spot, they are there so that more interesting plots can develop later on. Chae-gyeong's bro is a freak. Because his sister was leaving him, he showed off his depression by leaning his head toward a tree and making weird expressions on his face. When the reporters came to the Shins' house on the day of Chae-gyeong's departure, Shin Chae-jun snatched a mike away from a female reporter and then introduced himself as the princess' bro. Guards drove him away, and the reporter said something like, "That was a lie. He was a just a random guy from the neighborhood." (actually this might be from Volume 1... Due to the circumstances, I can't read Goong right now :<)
Yi Shin (Chae-gyeong jokes, "I like you so much, Shin [Ramen]" ... there's also a pun about Shin Ramen noodles + eggs later in the series), the Korean prince, keeps ignoring Chae-gyeong, and to me it was pretty clear that he really wants his wife to be miserable as hell. He tells her directly that she's going to be his doll, and he's going to have a lot of fun with her. Their relationship does improve in the later volumes, so don't worry. Ah. Forgot to mention this. Chae-gyeong and Shin sleep together in the last chapters!!! Chae-gyeong only had 1 bed, and there was nowhere else at Chae-gyeong's house where Shin could sleep (i.e. Chae-jun had to use his room to study for exams). The sleeping scene was rather quite funny. Maybe I should have upgraded the Comedy and Romance scores by .5 each.

• Visual quality: 12/12
• General plot: 9/10
• Comedy elements: 4.5/6
• Action elements: 2/3
• Romance elements: 2.5/3
• Mystery elements: 2.5/3
• Sophistication: 6/6
• Realness: 6/6
  

Overall: (9.1/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

(Dooly vs. Pikachu)

I found this pretty interesting journal article titled, "Manhwa, Manga, and Cultural Identity: Comic Readers and Nationalism in Korea" (i tried to upload the original to mediafire as alternative link, but it couldn't be b/c "virus found," so this is copy-pasted doc). It was written by a Japanese, Chie Yamanaka, and it's about the anxiety that Korean manhwa fans have about their consumption of Japanese manga and anime. I got to admit that I feel the same way about my liking of Japanese anime and music & that's why I think I quit my previous blog, Flavcorn, and started dokebiclub that focuses solely on Korean manhwa & animation. As I've written in a previous post titled, "Korean Animation," there aren't that many Korean animated works out there, so Korean manhwa fans can't help but watch Japanese anime.

The author points out an inherent contradiction with S. Korea's general rejection of Japanese pop culture (cultural ban on Japanese imports was lifted in 2003) - Korean pop culture is a hybrid culture that already includes Japanese cultural elements. Pepero, for example, is a copy of Japanese Pocky. Even the educational (i.e. elementary 1-6 grades, middle 1-3 grades, high 1-3 grades; instead of grades 1-12 as in the US) & legal systems are a continuation of the procedures established during the Japanese colonial rule.

(source)

Is it a problem? Yes it is! I'm like, "it's not too hard to invent your own snacks... why copy?" It's a problem because it allows hot-headed japanophile retards like James on Japan Probe repeat the Japanese racial superiority argument here. I tried to find out if Japan copied anything from Korea & I've yet to find at least 1. If I were to go back 5,000 years, I could find plenty that went from Korea to Japan, like introduction of agriculture, castle-building, metal type printing, porcelains, Buddhism, etc. So, maybe Japanese should forgive Korea for being a copycat just once in a while.

Back to the point... In the end, I think that Koreans should be able to enjoy Japanese culture. It's about time for Koreans to forgive Japan as a country for all the terrible things that happened from 1910 to 1945 & move on (but, that still doesn't mean that Japan can continue to distort history & deny things like comfort women.)

(In Korean: 궁)

A while back, people of all sorts - bloggers, forumers, youtubers, etc. - were all chanting, "Goong. Goong. Goong." so I looked it up & thought, "looks like crap," & completely forgot about it. Then few days ago, I got access to the entire series, and by then I had forgot that I had thought it was crap & had forgotten it, so I began reading it. My reaction then was, "omg this is uber."

I can't believe how beautiful the drawing is. Every page is so thoroughly detailed & artistic that they're actually uploaded as scans at animepaper.net. The usual anime style drawing doesn't even compare at all with how Goong's drawn b/c anime style is plastic & you can really enjoy it for like 2 seconds, & they essentially all look the same. The Koreans here actually look much more Korean. They weren't "beautiful" in the Caucasian style, which usually looks pretty sick in other manhwa's if "drawn beautifully."
Some people theorize that higher visual quality indicates inferior content overall, and vice versa; they actually make sense when you compare games for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 with those of Nintendo Wii. Not in this case. Goong is superb in all possible ways. The story's pretty complex because it's about a highschool girl who is forced to a marriage with a Korean prince (this is fiction b/c the Korean royal family doesn't exist any more). Thanks to the strangely admirable yet realistic drawing style, the characters feel more human & their presence & their thoughts and feelings are much more dramatic. In other words, funny scenes are funnier. Sad scenes are sadder. Exciting scenes are rollercoastic.

I don't know what else to say. I'm going to have so much fun reading the other volumes! He he he. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

• Visual quality: 12/12
• General plot: 9/10
• Comedy elements: 5/6
• Action elements: 2.5/3
• Romance elements: 2.5/3
• Mystery elements: 1.5/2
• Sophistication: 3/3
  
• Realness: 6/6
  

Overall: (9.2/10)

Download @ mangatraders
Download @ soompi

Although manhwa today is a genre that contains numerous comic book titles competing directly with Japanese manga, Korean animation is almost unheard of in the West. Korean animation is several decades old (watch these videos), but still it is "relatively young." In its early years, most Korean cartoons were pirated off of Japanese animation's, so they couldn't be exported (although this practice did help sustain the industry). Eventually, around the 1990s, S. Korean animators got to export overseas, but their works were all subcontracts with foreign companies; for example, PowerPuff Girls, Simpsons, etc. were all drawn in S. Korea, but they are still known as American cartoons. During the same period, the S. Korean animation industry produced several commendable titles, such as Dooly, Hamos, Honggildong, Lazenca, and Restol, but most of them were not exported b/c no one wanted them. Rare appearances of Korean cartoons such as Cubix (which was based in a completely cosmopolitan setting without a single trace of anything Korean in it) on western tv channels were not enough to elicit interests about the Korean animation itself as a genre.

After year 2000, Korean animation did shine a bit with high-quality works such as Wonderful Days, but the situation essentially has remained the same as before. The number of animation series produced in S. Korea annually is still very small, and exports remain minimal. Partly the reason for this situation is that S. Korea is a very small country. Japan, for example, is 3 times as big as S. Korea in terms of population and landmass; therefore, it makes sense that S. Korean animation should be smaller in volume than the Japanese anime. But S. Korean animation isn't 1/3rd the size of Japanese anime; it's more like 1/1000th. I think it's because there is this feedback effect between the market size and production (i.e. $10 million Wonderful Days only made $2 million at the S. Korean box office) due to the fact that, at a similar production cost, Korean animation industry can sow only as much as a 1/3rd of the profit that the Japanese anime industry would make. There is a similar relationship between distribution and the size of a pre-existing fanbase. It's much more difficult for a Korean animation series to be licensed and released in the United States because there is no one who will buy it & sponsor it. It's hard for people outside of S. Korea to even get updated or informed about Korean animation because no one writes about them. Why? Because no one's interested. Why? Because no one writes about them. See the feedback effect?

(Yobi, The Five-Tailed Fox)

If you're interested, here are some Korean animation works from the recent years. The titles are linked to reviews.

• Aachi & Ssipak
• Audition
• BASToF Lemon
• Doggy Poo
• Elysium
  
• Empress Chung
• If you were me
  
• Janggeum's Dream
  
• Mangchi, the Hammerboy
• My Beautiful Girl, Mari
• Oseam
  
• White Heart Baekgu
  
• Wonderful Days
• Yobi, The Five-Tailed Fox
  

(Oseam poster)

3 articles about Korean animation:

• 'Empress' draws two Koreas together
  
• Forget Manga. Here's Manhwa
• Korean Animation

(In Korean: 메탈하트)

(SPOILERS)

Min Si-ah comes to Hyun Min-woo's school (the fact that all the girls there are forced to wear the same uniform that appear in "Metal Heart 2" dating sim game is pretty ridiculous), and although Si-a's seated right next to him, Min-u can't even get close to her during break!

• Min-u: "Hey guys, that's my seat..."
• Girls: "Shut up! Don't get close to her, Min-u!"
• Ppl wearing NBC suits (nuclear-biological-chemical): "We can't let you get close to her. It's our duty to keep the new student from catching the Min-u virus!"

• When In-hyuk comes along, Girls: "...let me have In-hyuk virus!"
• Min-sia: "What's going on?" Girl: "It's just that Min-u's an ota.." Nuri quickly puts the girl to sleep & says, "...okaku when it comes to studying."

I couldn't help laughing and laughing again reading this volume, but I thought the story went too far when the body scanner goes berjerk with its cords grabbing onto naked girls waiting for their physical examinations.

• Visual quality: 8.5/10
• General plot: 6/10
• Comedy elements: 6.5/7
• Action elements: 3/3
• Romance elements: 1.5/2
• Otaku elements: 7.5/8
• Realness: 1.5/4 (the body scanner)
  

Overall: (7.8/10)

Download @ mangacopycat