Narration of Love at 17 4
Posted: May 12, 2009 Filed under: Narration of Love at 17 7 Comments »Here’s the end to another rather classy shoujo (or soonjong, I suppose) high school romance. It felt great following up Hana Yori Dango with this, because this picks apart the relationships between its characters, whereas Hana Yori Dango is more about the events.
For events, well… the vacation camp finishes without incident, and then the entire rest of the book is dedicated to the practice for the drama club’s “The Little Prince” performance. Now, they’d been talking about this since last volume, but every time a character said “The Little Prince,” I thought of “The Happy Prince” by Oscar Wilde. I was quite puzzled, and couldn’t figure out why a fox was replacing the bird. I didn’t actually realize what was going on until Seyoung mentioned Saint-Exupery. Apparently my reading comprehension has been going down the toilet lately. There are several Little Prince-like drawings that follow as she contemplates the similarities between herself and the fox.
What is actually going on is mostly in Seyoung’s head. She is agonizing over the fact that Yunho likes her, and she tries to figure out if she wants to fall in love again if it will mean a potential broken heart, and she is also distraught over the fact that her friend Hyunjung seems to like him. This romantic triangle is really the best, because Yunho really does like Seyoung, but has problems telling her, and Hyunjung’s feelings are something Seyoung has inferred and are not spoken. It really is heartbreaking to see Seyoung pushing Yunho away when you know she really does like him.
Again, it can be a bit agonizing because of the pace and the fact most of it is Seyoung running circles in her head, but I’d say that’s a pretty authentic 17-year-old thought process. I mean, who doesn’t remember going over this stuff in their head again and again in high school?
And appropriately, the last pages in the book take place just a few days before Seyoung’s 18th birthday.
What a beautiful series. I’m definitely checking out the other series by this author. On to Two Will Come!
[...] no Tsukurikata (Okazu) Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of Nabari no Ou (Comics Should Be Good) Connie on Narration of Love at 17 (Slightly Biased Manga) Melinda Beasi on vol. 7 of One Thousand and One Nights (There it is, Plain [...]
Oh yes, I’m glad you like it.. and I must check Two Will Come, too.. and you may want to check Into The Stars as well.. ^_^
Yes! They just started updating Into the Stars again, so I think I may wait until that one is complete and tackle the other, shorter series for the time being. I’m pretty excited about both, though.
I have decided manhwa isn’t for me after checking out Honey Mustard and Bring it on! (the arts aren’t my cup of tea) but I checked out this series and like it a lot. It seems that older art of manhwa suits me better. I’ll probably checking out other series of this author on netcomics. It looks like #2 Two will come is out of print, though.
This got to be a lot longer than I meant for it to be, but I’ve been on a real manhwa kick lately, so I sort of went overboard on recommendations. Also, it’s strange that Two Will Come 2 is just… gone from the search at Amazon. Usually you can bring up out-of-print items by entering the volume number. It’s also strange because that series is probably nowhere near a best-seller for Netcomics, it’s hard to believe they would have sold through their stock already. It still seems to be in stock at justmanga.com if you wanted to get ahold of it. I just grabbed the first two volumes from there myself.
There is a particular cutesy quality a lot of the licensed Korean series have to their art, but the two you mentioned (along with a lot of the ones Tokyopop and Yen Press publish) are for a younger age group, I believe, so you might want to check on some of the series for a slightly older audience before you write off manhwa completely. Evyione: Ocean Fantasy and Bride of the Water God both have really lovely, flowing linework with a lot of attention to costumes, detail, and background. Kye Young Chon has really amazing, hip-looking art with a focus on fashion and stuff like that in her series DVD and Audition. Tokyopop has a few series by Hee Jung Park, who has nice art and really great, subtle character-driven stories, Hotel Africa and Martin & John were my favorite of the group that got released.
But if you want to check out some older art, you might also look at Let Dai, which started running around 1995-98, I believe. It’s one of my favorite comics ever because it’s got an amazing & dramatic story, but it also has nice artwork. The Manhwa Novella Collections are all really old short stories from artists that have other series published by Netcomics, but the only two volumes I really liked were Devil’s Trill (by the author of Let Dai) and 9 Faces of Love. And one last one, Land of Silver Rain is by a famous classic Korean artist. The first and last volumes of that series are really great, and volumes 2 & 6 are okay, but the middle is not so good. She also has another series published by Netcomics called Operation Liberate Men, but I haven’t tried it yet.
> #2 Two will come is out of print
sorry, I meant that Amazon still lists it and it can be bought through amazon market (more than the price listed from publisher).
thanks for the rec’s. I’ll probably check out these out especially the netcomics ones since I don’t have to worry about shelf space :)
I’ve heard a lot of good/bad things about Let Dai and think it’s not my cup of tea.
Too little time, too many books … sigh!
Fair enough, Let Dai isn’t for anyone. The Netcomics website is a good place to start, since they publish series that tend to be off the beaten path of the light shoujo that Tokyopop and Yen Press cover. There’s a lot of weird stuff on the website that didn’t make it to print, or only has one or two volumes published.