Goong 1
April 1, 2009
Sadly, the only Yen Press series I have any interest in are the old Ice Kunion manhwa series. This one passed under my radar when it first came out (I think because Ice Kunion only got one volume squeezed out before they went under), but I decided to pick it up during a sale last summer, and just got around to reading it.
It’s quite good. I can’t quite explain it to you, because it does a lot of things that I hate. The main character is of the spazzy sort that has some sort of visual overreaction gag going on every few panels, and I hate reading series like that. Except her gags (and the gags for all other characters, too), involve the characters making the most horrible face ever. It makes me laugh even though I hate doing it. In addition to this, I sort of cringed when a scene started with the prince of Korea bumping into the main character. There’s one panel where I thought to myself “great, so she’s going to stand up to him since he’s being a jerk, and he’ll fall for her since she treats him like a regular person, and things will go on from there.” Before I could heave my mental sigh, the main character herself walks through these steps in an elaborate gag before revealing the truth of the matter, which was just that she and her friend were fighting over something the prince was throwing out and not standing up to him at all. The breaking of the fourth wall was weird, but it made me laugh anyway because it HAD me.
The actual plot of the series is that, after Chae-Kyung gets off on the wrong foot with the prince a few times, it comes out that the two of them are engaged through an old promise their grandfathers made (Chae-Kyung isn’t royalty, but her grandfather was apparently the former King’s best friend). The wedding has to take place immediately since the new princess will have to get accustomed to palace life from as young an age as possible (at this point, early high school, I guess, which is about as young as she can be without it being weird that she’s getting married). Neither one really wants anything to do with it, apparently the prince doesn’t have any real friends, and the one girl he asks to marry in Chae-Kyung’s place rejects him. So there you go.
Chae-Kyung also has to move away from her family and into the palace, and after that, she has to move far away from her own hometown since the prince wishes to live in a remote palace, away from his family. Chae-Kyung has to get used to the fact she will be a celebrity now and that people will treat her differently, and she’ll basically be leaving her old life behind to live with someone she doesn’t like and that sort of hates her back. There is an older prince that moves in from England that looks like he may be a potential romantic interest, too.
Despite Chae-Kyung’s silliness, I do kind of like the more serious look at how awful something like being randomly chosen to marry another person, and in this case a celebrity, would be. It actually left me quite curious about what is in Chae-Kyung’s immediate future, so I’m probably going to be reading the second volume tomorrow and picking up the next two ASAP. It’s very, very good.
April 1, 2009 at 12:13 pm
[...] (there it is, plain as daylight) Julie on vol. 2 of Future Lovers (Manga Maniac Cafe) Connie on vol. 1 of Goong (Slightly Biased Manga) Dick McVengeance on vol. 1 of Ikigami (Japanator) Connie on vol. 1 of [...]
April 1, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Heh. I have been planning all week to start reading Goong this week, since I’ve got a review copy of vol. 4 to do for Manga Recon. :)
I think most of what I’ve read from Yen Press has been Ice Kunion rescues (Moon Boy, Hissing), but I’m also fairly fond of Very! Very! Sweet, which doesn’t fall into that category.
April 2, 2009 at 6:17 am
I agree. I read the whole book in a very short time and immediately wanted to read more. Needless to say, the manhwa is much better than the TV drama Goong that I found extremely boring.
April 3, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Yeah, I was just reading about the drama, it looks like it got officially distributed in English, which is really weird. What does the drama do differently?
April 3, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Haha, I think I skipped over Very, Very Sweet because the title made me think of Sweety, a really terrible series that Infinity Studios publishes. Reading through your reviews of it though, it does sound pretty cute. Maybe I’ll give it a try. Mostly I was thinking of Zombie-Loan and the series I’d sampled in Yen Plus.
Goong is really great, though. I’m curious to see what you say about it.
April 4, 2009 at 7:03 am
Well, the beginning is basically the same and very interesting as well. But from the moment Chae-kyung got into the palace, it started to incredibly drag, hell it has 24 1-hour long episoded. Not to mention that I found prince’s cousin and his mother totally annoying and I couldn’t stand them.. ;-) But it will be different in manga, hopefully..
April 5, 2009 at 3:29 am
Hmm. Hopefully the manga stays interesting once it gets to the palace stuff, because I could see how that would be a problem if nothing really happens once she gets there. So far I like the cousin (at least a lot better than the prince, who is still a huge jerk), but it sounds like his mother might be… problematic, she’s entering the story as of the end of volume two. I’ve got high hopes, though, the first two volumes were so good.