Friday, April 17, 2015

Chiro by Hyekyung Baek


Title: Chiro
Author: Hyekyung Baek (no website found)
Publisher: NETCOMICS
Rating: WARTY!

This is one of the most boring graphic novels I've ever read. It;s done in that really annoying Japanese manga style, but I was willing to put up with it for a good story. Unfortunately, that never came. Instead I got mindless school girl antics which consisted exclusively of an obsession with clothes and boys. The main character is the vacuous Eun-Yo Song whose sole traits are beauty and popularity, because you know girls have nothing else to offer, right? Excuse me, I need to change my barf bag.

Evidently every boy in creation loves her except one, and of course that's the one she wants. What a startlingly original plot! I must remember to steal it for my next novel because it's never been done before. So what's her plan to get Chan-Gyeong? Does she plan on getting to know him, finding out his interests and seeing if they have anything in common? Nope. This genius's plan is to emulate rock star Nan Lee, who Eun-Yo purports to hate, and by this means win the boy who hitherto has shown zero interest in a girl whose sole claim to fame is her claim to fame. Brilliant! How can it fail?

While the art work wasn't bad, except that it was Japanese manga-style with giant eyes, and pointy noses and chins which I detest, the writing was of a level that suggested to me that it had been thrown together by a thirteen-year-old who had never been out of the house except to go to school, who had never seen any movie other than chick-click romance movies, who had read nothing other than romance books and fashion magazines. In other words, she's not interesting at all and neither is what she writes.

And neither was this. I couldn't even read it after the first couple of dozen pages when I saw where it was going and I realized that it never was coming back. I can't recommend this at all. Ah, that's the pharmacy calling with my renewed promethezine script. I'll be right back after these dosages.