Evil’s Return 1

Hwan Shin / Jong-Kyu Lee – Tokyopop – 2004 – 4 volumes

So, Tokyopop has a handful of bad series that are more exercises in bad taste than they are genuinely unreadable. The narrative suffers in all cases, certainly, but there are far worse reads out there, and the badness is accompanied by an “ick” factor that I find extremely enjoyable. Warriors of Tao and Arm of Kannon were two series that were bad in almost every sense of the word, but also radical. Evil’s Return is another.

Evil’s Return may be in far worse taste thematically than the other two. How bad is bad taste? Let’s read the back cover:

When the floodgates of Yumi’s womanhood burst open, demons rush in, clamoring to make the high school senior the mother of evil itself. It will take everything the forces of good have to protect her from this wicked fate… and everything good has is manifest in a mystical warrior Hyun… but he’s going to need the help of a hot-shot freshman who talks tough, carries a big stick and has fallen in love with the prophesied Mother of Hell.

I don’t think I’ve ever copied a book’s plot summary before, but that’s far more eloquent than I can manage.

There are several things to point out in that plot summary, but I will leave you to ponder those things.

The thing about actually reading the volume is that you desperately need that plot summary, because none of that is explained. You kind of get the idea that Hyun is protecting Yumi, but you don’t realize what all the bad vibes are until much later. You don’t even really understand the demons are after Yumi until a near-rape scene at the end of the volume. There are occasional demons, but mostly there’s that freshman beating everyone up like Nagi from Tenjho Tenge, students badmouthing “weird” Yumi for no real reason, and lots and lots of T&A and moving around with no explanation and very little dialogue.

Despite all these many shortcomings, it opens with a really graphic, horrible scene of Yumi violently getting her period. After that, it was hard for me not to like it. I mean, I knew what was going on because I read the back, right?

I’m sure this will not be good. It will be terrible in every way a series can be (well, the art’s all right, except for the bushy eyebrows), but I will still enjoy it immensely, and then it will go on the shelf with the other books that are in questionable taste.