manhua: The Four Constables Vol 1-2

[meganbmoore]

The Four Constables is a fairly standard wuxia in comic book form, focusing on four swordbrothers raised by (of course) a famous kung fu master named Zhuge. They all have more than one name, but I’l just use their nicknames, which are Emotionless, Iron Hands, Life Snatcher and Cold Blooded. Life Snatcher is immune to alcohol and was a debt collector until his inner softie got him in trouble. He’s also either dumb but lucky, or crafty but acts dumb. Emotionless was crippled as a child, but became a master of projectile weapons and compensating for not being able to use his legs with his arms. He also has a flying wheelchair with projectile weapons. Cold Blooded was raised by wolves. I eagerly await Iron Hands’s backstory.

Unlike most kung fu masters and their pupils, Master Zhuge voted against the standard mountain/cave hermit thing and instead serves the throne and court. Very sensible of him. As a result, the four aren’t naïve young men entering the real world after being locked away on a mountain, but fairly well known heroes. It’s something of a fun mirror on the normal wuxia in this regard. They are currently trying to catch The 13 Masters, who are trying to overthrow the emperor or some such.

The art is pretty spiffy, despite sometimes falling prey to way too many muscles, but it’s rather light on plot and has even more fight scenes than shounen, and there’s something a little too stilted about the translation at times. Despite this, the series and characters have a certain charm, and I admit to being fairly fond of a particular subplot.

Spoilers:

So, when Emotionless was a superangsty kid thinking about how his life was “OMG OVER!!” because he was a wheelchair, a little girl named Yan started coming by every day and sharing stick candy with him through the garden window. When she finally asked him about the wheelchair and got the “WOES MY LIFE IS USELESS!” she showed him the side of her face that she had always kept hidden from him and revealed a large, disfiguring birthmark that had her own parents calling her a demon, and told him to to grow and get over it because he isn’t the only one with problems. Then she disappeared.

So naturally Yan is one of The 13 Masters! And has decided that she must kill Emotionless herself because the others will make him suffer first! WANGST! She also somehow lost the birthmark along the way, which disappoints me.

Because, you know, “enemies as lovers” is way more interesting when it’s actually “friends/lovers turned enemies” or “friends/lovers who don’t know they’re enemies.” For me, at least.
 

(Where did all my wuxia icons go?)

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i'm going to read the rest of this series before i think about getting the sequel series. (By high points, I suspect you mean romantic wangst.)

I was int he middle of ordering Le Chevalier d'Eon when they went and didn't have a volume in the middle available. I may yet get Speed Grapher though.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Really? I think they have all the volumes of Le Chevalier right now, but Speed Grapher is currently missing the regular edition of volume 4. (I snagged the last one of those.) But the limited edition volume 4 is still there, it looks like.

(Yeah, I mean romantic shenanigans by high points. As expected, I like that version of enemies as lovers better too.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I'll go look.

(It was the "because of our past, I will kill you myself because it will be a kinder death" bit that made me take notice.)