Evil’s Return 3

Hwan Shin / Jong-Kyu Lee – Tokyopop – 2005 – 4 volumes

Oh, Evil’s Return. You’re just so bad. So much T&A, so little plot, so much gore. I especially like the way the female student’s clothing just… shreds inexplicably at the slightest sign of conflict.

I can’t even tell you what’s going on here, or critique it in any meaningful way. Much like the other two volumes, the plot centers around a fight scene, and not much time passes. There’s a new character introduced at the beginning of the volume (a Catholic exorcist with special powers, in the form of a hot young teenage girl), and outside… maybe two scenes establishing her as a new character, there is a long fight scene, then a flashback shortly afterwards where we learn the past life of Cha Il, the Warrior God Chi Yu. That’s mostly a fight scene with some violence thrown in, along with a truncated time line.

The fight scene is with the enemy… the White White Cult’s leader, or whatever. There’s a clever ruse to distract Tae and the new girl (that involves buxom female zombies and a lot of violence) while the leader goes after Cha Il and Yumi. After a not-so-lengthy struggle, the scene flashes to Tae’s monastery, where Cha Il is taken in order to heal him after his… infection by darkness. The only way to do that is to awaken Chi Yu, hence the flashback.

I mean, stuff happens. It’s certainly entertaining. But even with that flashback, I wouldn’t say there’s any real plot or character development. The flashback explains a character… that isn’t even really in the story, and it doesn’t give him any real depth since he simply kills and is possessive. And the plot certainly doesn’t really go anywhere, save for a twist at the end. “Twist” is… less accurate than saying it’s moving somewhere.

I’m not bored, but this is still pretty rotten stuff. I’m only digging it because I enjoy ridiculous violence, and the fanservice is really making me laugh. For the record, this is worse than Arm of Kannon.

Also, I think it’s really funny that the next volume preview says we have to wait for the next volume to come out in Korea before it could be translated into English, as if there was a lot of suspense building in the story here and we had to wait with baited breath. I do like that Tokyopop used to always put the release dates and a next volume preview in the backs of their books, and I liked it even better when we were given an explanation like this when there would be a delay. The fourth volume of Paradise Kiss had a preview like that. I guess it was the suspense of waiting for that last volume of Paradise Kiss for a year that makes this sound really silly. I mean, I really wanted that book. The fourth volume of Evil’s Return… not so much. I can’t imagine anyone was really wound up for it.