manhwa: Legend Vol 1-3

[meganbmoore]

According to legend, the bulkirin was a normal legendary beast until a king summoned it to reality so that it could grant him a wish. After that, it was trapped in reality and people kept asking it to grant wishes until it went mad and killed half the humans of the world. Its rampage was stopped when a hero with a seven bladed sword was able to control it.

(I have no idea whether or not this is an actual Korean legend, and I can’t seem to find anything on it online.)

A thousand years ago, a young swordsman named No-Ah confronts a mysterious lord about his missing sister. The lord admits to taking No-Ah’s sister, and says he’ll return her if No-Ah finds the pieces of the seven bladed sword and brings it to him. To do so, No-Ah needs the help of Eun-Gyo, a modern 15-year-old. No-Ah initially tries kidnapping her, but that doesn’t work out to well do to her effectiveness at kicking, punching, biting, and pulling hair. So he asks for her help and she agrees, not realizing that he means “travel 1000 years in the past with me with no guarantee you’ll get back.”

This is by the same manhwagas as Angel Diary, and like Angel Diary, it starts with a decent bit of the story already underway and slowly fills in the blanks even as it introduces conspiracies and secrets and mysteries under the cute and fluffy exterior. It also has Angel Diary’s habit of going “hijinks and magic and fight and rescues and oh yeah, didn’t we say it’s a romance ok here’s a stolen look and blushing ooh let me do this bit of mythology and drop a few megaplot hints now.”

For the main plot, it seems to be a modern fantasy retelling of the legend, with No-Ah as the hero, the lord as the bulkirin, and Eun-Gyo as the sword. Or something along those lines. (She sees a picture of the sword at school and calls it a “key,” so I’m fairly certain she won’t actually be turning into a sword.) A lot of these volumes featured No-Ah and Eun-Gyo on various adventures as they look for the sword’s blades, with their adventures including or rewriting a Korean legend or piece of folklore, with the original legend included in a note from the manhwagas after. Along the way they also acquire Ho-Dong a sarcastic and corrupt (but reforming) priest trapped in the body of a child.

Not as good as Angel Diary (and I miss the shameless genderbending) but cute and enjoyable, with potential to go interesting places.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

The only thing I know about seven-bladed swords is that the king of Paekche (southwestern part of the peninsula, before Silla ended up controlling it) gave the Wa or Wae (Japanese) king such a sword in the fourth century CE. Wikipedia has some info (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-Branched_Sword), if you trust it; I remember seeing a ref (though with a different date) in Nihongi, the eighth-century Japanese chronicle.

(Oh, and such a sword shows up in Phoenix Wright, but that hardly helps here.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've seen seven bladed swords show up in a few things (Angel Sanctuary comes to mind) but never in the context of a story like this.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I guess it would travel well as a half-mythic prop. hmm.