 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | DARK HORSE | | | ▪ | AUTHOR / ART: | | PARK JOONG-Ki | | | ▪ | FORMAT: | | ENGLISH / B&W | | | ▪ | PAGES: | | 200 | | | ▪ | RATING: | | 16+ | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 02/20/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 07/06/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | SCOTT CAMPBELL |
One of the best-selling Korean epics of all time, Shaman Warrior recently won Korean Culture and Content Agency’s 2006 “Best Manhwa of the Year” award. Now you might be thinking: “What is Manhwa? I thought this was manga.” Well in a sense there isn’t much difference – Manhwa is the Korean word and equivalent of manga. The Japanese produce some wonderful graphic novels and stories, but the Koreans have shown they can do a great job too – more and more so in the recent years especially. This particular collection is translated into English (just like Japanese manga are), and oriented in its original left-to-right reading format, and published at its original size. In volume six, old relationships are again united as one and our heroes press on with their charges. Reunited with Batu, her sworn protector, Yaki learns of the events that led Batu to follow and serve her father - the shaman warrior Yarong. How did the toughest Butcher Camp wrestler wind up pledging his life and loyalty to the refined, mystical Yarong? When you're the daughter of the most powerful shaman warrior who's ever lived, it's just the tale you want to hear before you set off to destroy those who murdered your father and have a genocidal hatred of your people. The corrupt forces of Kugai, which have sworn to destroy the shaman warriors and their bloodlines, have no idea that Batu, Yaki, and the resourceful shaman Horakaan are setting a plan in motion to kill their General. Yuda, the Death Lord who defeated Yarong, senses that his opponents are getting near, though - and he has some nasty surprises of his own in store for them! The art in Shaman Warrior is so wonderfully consistent throughout each new volume, and it can really be called art due to its proficiency. The concept of art and what is artistic will differ in opinion from one person to the next, but most people should be able to look at the pages of Shaman Warrior and instantly think that this work is exquisitely drawn. Each page must have taken forever, as the characters, backgrounds, and everything else are all drawn in the utmost detail. Art quite like this is far and few between in the manga/manwha world – it’s unique and worth mentioning. Something that really helps showcase the art is the size of the books. Each book in this series is sizably larger than the usual industry standard for manga like a Viz book, or a Tokyo Pop book. Having the books be of a larger size means the art will in turn be a larger size. With larger art comes the potential to see more detail in what you are reading, so Shaman Warrior does well to be presented in this format. Each panel is of a pretty good size also – rather than trying to stick 10 panels on a page, the artist does 5 instead, so you can see a lot more and not feel overwhelmed by having to deal with too much detail in too small of a place. It’s hard to verbalize exactly, but the look and feel in this series could perhaps be described as “refreshingly clean.” It’s just so enjoyable to look at – you have to read it yourself to get the full effect and see the difference this kind of formatting makes. Text is easy to read too, and manhwa reads left to right just like English books, so it’s a good introduction for anyone not used to reading manga in a right to left format. The back of the book again contains a very funny author-related joke comic making fun of the yaoi genre of manga, as the author has his serious male characters “get it on” with each other in hopes of gaining a new fan base. Instead of getting fan letters in the comic, the author is actually pictured receiving hate mail from his devoted male readers. Sometimes the author/artist will make a short comic about themselves and their experiences while creating the series and this one is just so humorous and understandable – it’s nice to see he can poke a little fun at himself!
IN SUMMARY:
Shaman Warrior is one of the best martial arts/fantasy books out there – it just screams with quality from the art to the dynamic story that pulls you in without a hitch. Highly recommended!
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved
|
