Of Swords and Parasols

Though a blast right up until the (bitter?) end, this was a woefully anticlimactic manhwa! I think the manhwaga literally got to near the end of the arc, decided she was ready to end it (or was told it was time to) and added an epilogue.

( spoilers )

Despite the ending (which is not so much bad as it is an inconclusive non-ending) this is a really fun series that plays around with a lot of the normal shoujo tropes, and consistently manages to avoid going predictable routes.

Thanks to her older brother, Miha is a tomboy who is a strong as-or stronger than, most boys. Her brother claims that he forced her to get strong because he was training to get strong to impress a girl and needed someone to practice on, but in actually, he did it because their mother expected him to do everything for Miha, making her effectively helpless, and him effectively a slave (in his mind). It’s unclear as to whether he decided to make her get tough out of self-defense out of evilness, warped over-protection, or self-preservation. Or some sort of combination.

When Miha finds a boy passed out drunk in the girls’ locker room at her school, she thinks he’s a pervert who passed out before he could actually do anything, knocks him out when he wakes up, and throws him in a cab. Later, however, she learns that he’s Seung-Suh, a new transfer student with a reputation for violence. He’s more than a bit upset about being knocked out and tossed in a cab only to wake up to a huge bill. She’s not disposed to feel guilty about thinking the drunk man passed out in the girls’ locker room was bad news. It is war.

The back cover blurb implies that this is a reverse Beauty and the Beast story where the “bad” boy makes the “good” girl more proper and ladylike. Thankfully, this isn’t the case, so far at least, and Seung-Yuh is just as violent, wild, and temperamental as Miha is, if not moreso. He’s more petty and vindictive than a care for, given the circumstances, but much better than I was expecting. There’s also Yun-Jin, Miha’s friend who seems cold and perfect, but is actually bullied, and Mu-Jin, Seung-Suh’s friend who is usually the only thing that can calm him down, as well as Kiri, Miha’s best friend, who appears to be a former gangster.

Fun, and much better than the blurb would lead one to believe. (Thankfully, I was recced it mostly on the basis of the actual story, as opposed to the implied story.)