Review of ‘LOVE SOS’ Volume 2

(In Korean: 사랑 SOS)
Back at the hospital, Danbi is visited by Hansol, who asks if Danbi’s newly arrived roommate (Arum) is Sung-oo. When Hansol says that the girl seems to fake her voice, Danbi gets rlly mad and makes so much ruckus that people come in to check on the two. Danbi apologizes and takes Hansol outside because he keeps peeking on “Arum” (he’s actually trying to see who she really is).


Hansol takes out a cigarette to smoke, but Danbi smacks the cigarette out of his hand with strong disapproval. Although Hansol tries to justify himself by saying that he’s “almost” 17, Danbi replies, “17 isn’t an adult,” which makes Hansol laugh. I assumed that he laughs because Danbi sounds cute and naïve, but it’s actually because, as he says, he started smoking when he was only 13 years old. He explains, “So I’d get yelled by your aunt.” The “miserable introduction” is all that Hansol can manage to say about his complex relationship with his “mother.”

Hansol pulls Danbi onto his motorcycle, and, saying, “oh yea, you can’t see” (remember that Danbi had lost her eyes in the beginning of Volume 1, but her vision was recovered with a pair of eyes donated by Su-yeong, who’s now dead) as an excuse, he hugs her tightly for a joke. Just then, they see Han Bada walking by, so Hansol calls him and reveals to Danbi that they’re very close friends. I personally think Hansol and Sungmin look cooler, but Han Bada is supposedly a beautiful pretty boy.

Saying that “something just came up,” Hansol asks Bada (name literally meaning “sea”) to take Danbi home on his bike and walks away. Since it seems a bit unnatural that Bada is casually walking by a hospital, he explains that he lives nearby, and he is the son of the doctor who performed surgery on Danbi. Bada riding the motor bike reminds her of the guy who "saved" her, so Danbi asks him if he met her before by the Han River; nope. To make sure, Danbi keeps touching his back but stops when Bada complains. When they arrive at aunt's house, Bada gives Danbi her pendant (which in Vol. 1 Danbi gave to the guy @ Han River, but coincidentally Bada had it later and wouldn't give it back to her), and Danbi asks him if he wants in exchange. He wants a kiss xxxx xxx xxxx.

Danbi gets inside the house and finds Hansol all naked (I wonder how he got to the house first) after taking a shower. Although Danbi freaks out, Hansol asks, "you're blind, so why does it matter?"

  • Visual quality: 7.5/10
  • General plot: 8.5/10
  • Comedy elements: 5/6
  • Action elements: 2.5/3
  • Romance elements: 2.5/4
  • Mystery elements: 2.5/3
  • Realness: 5.5/6
Overall: (8.1/10)

Download Volume 2
Torrent Volume 2

Review of ‘LOVE SOS’ Volume 1

(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)

'Very! Very! Daisuki' vol 1 ch 1

(In Korean: 배리! 배리! 다이스키)

I was surfing the web looking for manhwa-related stuffs & came upon this title. I wondered, "why 'daisuki' (I love you, in Japanese) in a title of a manhwa?" Immediately all sorts of theories came up in my mind & they were mostly disagreeable stuffs, so I just decided to forget about the title & move on. But then, I didn't find anything interesting elsewhere, so I came back to the manhwa. The synopses provided for this manhwa by the Korean sites were all the same:
"독도는 우리 땅이야! 왕 쪼잔한 놈아!"
지구를 위해 숲을 사고픈, 주변....

"Dokdo is our territory! You xxx xxx xxx!"
I was like, "uhhh.. the manhwa cover doesn't look as if it'd be concerned with a territorial dispute....." But this got me pretty curious & so I spent a long time searching for a scanlation of the first 2 chapters. I found vol 1 chap 1, but couldn't find chapter 2 which is also out somewhere on the web.

v1c1 was quite interesting, but I don't think I can give a rating on a single chapter of an entire volume. The drawing quality is not bad, but, for comparison, I'll say that it's not as good as that of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga's that I read few years ago. I really like the drawing of Chiyoshi's grandfather. He looks serious & ancient enough for his role as a scary grandpa. A cute or gay-looking grandpa wouldn't fit with all the dramatic interactions that he has with Chiyoshi. The first chapter of the first volume of Very! Very! Daisuki is filled with funny & silly moments, but I can't say much more about from reading just the first chapter.

(Read a review of it here)

Download v1c1
Torrent v1c1

Alternative to current anime/manhwa character style

Someone did agree with my complaints (1 & 2) about anime's inaccurate presentation of Asian features. See my post @ flavcorn on "Japanese anime characters who look Japanese," & read the comments. The tacit assumption among the anime fans seems to be that Asians are just ugly, or they don't look all the interesting, and therefore they would look terribly in a realistic animation.

People who think Asians are ugly just don't know enough about Asia, its traditions, & its pop culture. As I've shown here, Europeans are beautiful & ugly in their own way; it's not simply "oh you have blonde hair & blue eyes, so you are automatically pretty." Anyone could argue with me about this, but why bother? The only thing that matters is that accurate representation of Asian features can be superior to the current anime style (which.... evolved that way gradually for various, legitimate reasons that I've outlined here).

Only reason why Asians don't appear too often in anime's & manhwa's is that the 2D outlines don't suit Asians' gradual facial contours. But I'm sure that, in time, animators will be able to draw with multiple, overlapping transparency layers that will allow Asian facial features to be portrayed accurately.


(click to enlarge)

Manhwa drawings of Hanbok dress

Hanbok is a traditional Korean dress. There are several different types of men's wears (i.e. white jacket-like robe for casual wear by the yangban aristocrats; colored robes for scholar official bureaucrats, black jacket-like robes with colored arms for the military officers, etc.), but women's dresses all stick to this layout:
Koreans wear Hanbok's on very special occasions, such as the Chinese New Year, weddings, graduation, etc. Actually, with exception of the New Year, only women wear hanbok's, and men prefer coat-and-tie.

Here are some pictures of people in Hanbok:

(last: a typical Korean farmer attire from the Joseon Dynasty)


(1st & 2nd: these appeared in Vogue Korea) (3rd: Joseon Dyn. mil. officer uniform)


(1st: modernized hanbok) (4th: a blond French woman dressed in hanbok)


(1st: Air hostess) (2nd: Joseon Dynasty palace maid attire)

Hanbok-based art:


(1st: Joseon Dynasty painting) (3rd: contemporary traditional-style painting... looks Japanese)

Ok. Here are some anime / manhwa style drawings of Hanbok:

Artist: Ewen Nguyen


(Sailor Moon in Hanbok)


Original source: http://alex2836.egloos.com/868150
Artist: 알렉세이 (Alecsei)


Original source: http://junsss.egloos.com/417395
Artist: 준코사마 (Jun-ko-sa-ma)


Original source: http://alex2836.egloos.com/868157
Artist: 알렉세이 (Alecsei)


Original source: http://alex2836.egloos.com/868157
Artist: 알렉세이 (Alecsei)


Original source: http://alex2836.egloos.com/868150
Artist: 알렉세이 (Alecsei)


Original source: http://alex2836.egloos.com/868142
Artist: 알렉세이 (Alecsei)


Original source: http://alex2836.egloos.com/868142
Artist: 알렉세이 (Alecsei)


Original source: http://www.island-horizon.com/2007/Frameset.htm
Artist: Island of Horizon

Doesn't the dress of a Japanese priestess look very similar to a Hanbok dress?
(Kikyo from Japanese anime Inuyasha)
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