Sakura of DOOM

This is a retelling of 1001 Arabian Nights, only this time, Scheherazade is the boy Sehara. I was excited about the gender bending until I learned that the sultan was still played by a man.

So far, the story is following the frame fairly well. The sultan (I forgot his name in this version) marries his father's old wife, who then goes on to betray him. In return, he decides to marry a woman every day and execute her the next morning. To stop the carnage, Sehara steps in and begins to tell stories.

Well, actually, I can't remember if the sultan's wife was originally his stepmother in the original. Also, instead of doing it for the sake of the murdered women, Sehara steps in because the sultan rescued him (or he rescued the sultan) a while ago, and he fell in love with the sultan. We also get the stubbly, glasses-wearing, extremely hot vizier, now imprisoned, and not Sehara's father, and a near-incestuous relationship between Sehara and his sister.

Honestly, I found the frame story to be rather boring, which is sad because I like the original so much. But they removed the women! So instead of getting a contrast to the sultan's evil wife in Scheherazade, you get the sultan's misogyny having him accept a male wife instead, which I feel reflects poorly both on a feminist and on a glbt level.

On the other hand, I may read the next one because the art is so gorgeous. Also, instead of staying with the tales from Arabian Nights, the manhwaga is adapting tales from all over. I really loved the story within this volume, which stars a cold, icy princess. I would read an entire series about her if there were one!

On a side note, when I was reading this at rachelmanija's, I noticed that the manhwaga had a thing for Chinese culture. The younger sister notes that Chinese people eat "dirty" things like pork -- I bristled at that, until another character refuted it or said it wasn't forbidden for them. There were other random mentions of Chinese culture worked in, like a Romance of the Three Kingdoms reference, along with the Chinese influences (sideways, given that it's Turandot) in the story. I was very amused by this, given that the manhwa is still set somewhere in Baghdad (I think).