Yun Mi-Kyung - Bride of the Water God, vol. 01 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

Soah's village sacrifices her to be the bride of the water god Habaek for much-needed rain. When Soah wakes up after the ceremony, she finds she's in a different land with floating islands and the young child king. She doesn't realize that Habaek has a secret, though.

Now that I think about it, not much happens in volume one. On the other hand, I don't care because the art? It is gorgeous. Check out pages on Amazon. The entire volume is like that, and even if there had been much plot, I probably wouldn't have noticed among the gorgeous swirly hair, the costumes, and the landscapes.

That said, I do actually like the characters so far, and I particularly love that it’s a take on the usual animal bridegroom/Cupid and Psyche/Beauty and the Beast type story, which I’ve always been a sucker for. And I want to know if the older woman who comes in later is the Queen Mother of the West (Xi Wangmu) from Chinese mythology, since the Korean name sounds vaguely familiar. On the other hand, I could be completely making that up!

Also, now I want to know how much of the mythology the author is creating and how much is taken from traditional sources and what she’s doing to them. This goes a little back to my thing about common knowledge; one of the reasons why I’m so sad that Chinese mythology and story and legend isn’t as well known is because this means I get less stuff in English riffing off of it. Like most people, I learned the basic mythology of my culture via adaptations, not from the original source. Anyway, brief digression to note that I wish I knew more Korean mythology.

So far, I very much like this. Also, did I mention how gorgeous it is?

Comments

[octopedingenue]

Yay! I am weak for animal bridegrooms/Cupid&Psyche too. I will have to check this out, as I am on a manhwa kick lately. It should be nice to read some manhwa without wince-inducing translation (I have been reading lots of NETCOMICS series). Speaking of, have you seen Dokebi Bride? It is amazing, even with the professional Engrish.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I love Dokebi Bride. :D

[octopedingenue]

BEST. BEAST. BRIDEGROOM. EVER. Even before he randomly turned into Spider-Man!!

[oyceter]

Oh yay! I really like this one so far.

I need to read Dokebi Bride! I've had v. 1 for the longest time and just never gotten around to it.

Btw, do you have any manhwa recs? I keep meaning to get into it, but don't quite know where to start. I think I've read the first volumes of Goong (liked), 100% Perfect Girl (liked until attempted rape), INVU (don't remember), Demon Diary (too fluffy), and Angel Diary (so far incoherent but I do not care because it has the King of Hell!).

[octopedingenue]

Dokebi Bride starts off verrrryyy slowly (the sort-of second lead doesn't even show up til the third volume or so), but when it hits not even the awkward translation can make it not awesome.

I definitely have manhwa recs!! I will start a recs post now that will totally go into 3000 words, oh well.

[oyceter]

Whoo! I encourage 3000+ words on manhwa!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ooh, pretty! I shall have to find this!

[oyceter]

Oh do! I think you'll like it, and it'll probably hit some of your folklore buttons.

[larryhammer]

It's one of the few works where the gorgeousness makes me not care about other problems -- pretty art alone rarely pulls something for me. Though those characters might also distract me on their own.

And, yeah, the root story is one that works for me.

---L.

[oyceter]

Yes, definitely! I usually can't do plain pretty art if the story's completely incoherent, though I will actually sit through a lot of incomprehensible plot for pretty art (see: early volumes of Tsubasa and xxxHolic). I'm hoping this quickly veers into awesomesauce territory, as Tsubasa and xxxHolic did.

[chomiji]

Wow, that looks fantastic! I just bookmarked it for future reference.

Thanks!

[oyceter]

Yay! It's very pretty.

[(Anonymous)]

yep, from the name and the vague description, the "older woman" is definitely
the chinese Queen Mother of the West. So ur rite on that. I'm surprised as of how you heard of her tho. Most westerners don't

[oyceter]

I'm actually Chinese and grew up partly in Taiwan ;).