Full House 1

I mentioned the Right Stuf sale in the sidebar, and if you have any inclination, you should indulge in those ridiculously cheap CPM volumes, I believe the sale runs until the 27th.  Just looking at all the wonderful manhwa they had makes me quite sad, I wish they hadn’t gone under.  Anyway, I took advantage of the sale to pick up the four available volumes of this series.  Now, I’ve fallen in love with everything I’ve read by Sooyeon Won, and Full House is apparently her most popular series, with an insanely popular Korean Drama to go along with it.  My expectations were very high.

Now, I’m reading Full House, and I am rather surprised by what I see.  Both Let Dai and Devil’s Trill were melodramatic and dark.  Full House is a by-the-book romantic comedy.  Not even so much in a manga sense, but in a Hollywood sense.  A woman is mysteriously kicked out of the house her late father designed one day, apparently because it was somehow acquired by the hottest actor around.  While fuming over this a couple days later, she is struck by a car driven by none other than said famous actor.  The sparks fly, and the two absolutely do not get along.  The woman wants her house as settlement for the car accident, and when the actor will not accept the deal, she proposes they get married so that she can have the house that way.  They both have a good laugh before verbally abusing each other some more.  But the actor’s manager sees it as an opportunity to beat a recent string of bad press surrounding the actor, and before you know it, the two are engaged.

What?! Where are the broken hearts?  Where’s the weepy protagonist?  Where are all the events keeping the fated couple separated?  Where are the dramatic monologues?  Where’s the couple destined to be together?  Certainly not Elle and Ryder, they hate each other.

I have faith it will get much better, though.  Hopefully it will happen before I get to the fourth volume, which was all that was published in English.  I doubt it will get to the levels of melodrama that the other two series have, but I’m willing to bet we’ll get to see some wonderful character development before all is said and done.  Plus, with the forced loveless marriage, this volume made me think of Goong, another Korean series I really like with the same theme.

I’m having trouble finding information about the series (even the Korean wikipedia entry for Sooyeon Won failed me), but the artwork in this series is so far behind what it was in Let Dai I’d venture a guess that this came out years before, or, at the very least, this series ran for years and Let Dai just looks better than the volume I’m reading right now.  Her art isn’t bad, but it’s got a mid-90s quality to the hair, fashion, and screentones that are used.  About the only thing my research dug up was that Won is currently working on Full House II, which just reinforces my belief that this is her most popular series by far.  I’m sure it’s awesome, and I’m looking forward to reading what I can of it.

As different as it was from what I was expecting, I still think it will surprise me by making me love a really deep, well-thought-out romantic comedy.