Kingdom of the Winds 3
June 30, 2009
If I haven’t mentioned it already, the art in this series is worth talking about. It has an early 90s look to it, with soft, rounded character designs, and there is frequently a lot of care put into detailing the background and sometimes the clothing. I also like the creature/spirit design, though they aren’t really the best you’ll find. The place Kingdom of the Winds truly excels, however, is the composition of the panels, and the way composition and abstraction are used to generate mood in the volumes. It’s fantastic, and there are very few other series that can get away with the dramatic stuff used for composition here. I love it.
Of course, there’s the epic story, too. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good grasp of all the characters and plot nuances as of this volume. Since it is (I think) based on a historical novel, it’s got a lot of the same problems as Hoshin Engi. Hoshin Engi makes up for the problems (ie too many characters with too many things going on to keep track of in a manga) with humor and originality, but this one makes up for it with mood and foreshadowing. It’s harder to keep track of things in Kingdom of the Winds since the gigantic cast of characters all have different motivations and different stories and stakes in what’s going on, but I love the dark mood, and it’s not too difficult to keep the gist of things in mind. Some of the smaller details (there are still a number of footnotes comparing the story to the Korean history book and giving additional details into what’s going on) I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully get into, but it doesn’t seem that important.
This volume was mostly exposition. Aside from some excitement at the beginning where the king’s sister Seryu falls prey to spirits in the mountains and King Muhyul slays a demon in the prince’s chamber, something that is apparently extremely unadvisable, most of everything else going on are third parties getting the spirits riled up in order to attack Muhyul or delay his progress in some way. There’s also lots of foreshadowing and flashback with both Haemyung and Goeyu. To give you an idea of their situations, Haemyung (the king’s elder brother) killed himself at his father’s request some years ago, and I believe his ghost still talks and advises Goeyu, though this could be flashbacks, too. Goeyu’s bigger problem is his wife, who is a celestial being that descended to earth to be with him. She’s up to some bad things… it’s not terribly clear what, but he wants free from her love. They are currently living an isolated lifestyle in the mountains.
July 1, 2009 at 7:08 am
[...] for Kids) Oyceter on Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventures in Japan (Sakura of DOOM) Connie on vol. 3 of Kingdom of the Winds (Slightly Biased Manga) Snow Wildsmith on Living for Tomorrow (Fujoshi Librarian) Julie on vol. 13 [...]