Angel Cup, Vols. 1 & 2
Published by: Tokyopop
Writer: Dong Wook Kim
Artist: Jae Ho Youn

208 (190) & 200 (188) pages.
Original Language: Korean
Orientation: Left to right
Vintage: 2001. US editions June and October 2006
Translation: Grace Min (1) & Jumi V. Yang (2)
English Adaptation: Hope Donovan
Retouch & Lettering: Mike Estacio (1) & Brandon Vilette (2)
Production Artist: Lucas Rivera
Cover Design: Kyle Plummer
Graphic Artist: Fawn Lau
Editor: Lillian Diaz-Przybyl (1) & Katherine Schilling (2)
Publisher’s Rating: Teen, ages 13+

Rating: 3 out of 5

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Premise: So-jin is a rising high-school freshman, a former junior-high soccer MVP who gave up the sport after failing to beat her rival Shin-bee for three years running. She even transfers to Hansin High, a school without a girl’s team. Fate is about to pull a fast one on So-jin, as she rediscovers her passion for soccer and her rival, along with a challenge she just has to face down– all in her first day.

Synopsis:

There are two plot threads so far–

Running in the background: Women’s soccer is about to get a real shot in the arm with a large endowment provided by a sports enthusiast’s will to found a Girl’s league in Korea. Many schools will seek to build a team over the next months, including Hansin High, which has a highly ranked boys team already– No one has bothered to tell the girls, though. While this B-plot will likely drive the rest of the series, in the first two volumes it’s mostly just hints and cryptic comments from characters who haven’t been introduced yet.

The A-plot has to do with a bet, and a game. So-jin was surprised to find that her old jr. high rival also transferred to Hansin High. She was doubly shocked when Shin-bee ended up in the same homeroom class, and is about to have kittens when she finds out that Shin-bee doesn’t even play soccer anymore. Instead, Shin-bee has signed up as the manager of the boy’s team, a position with little respect and even a bit of verbal abuse from the guys.

So-jin steps in (she wasn’t invited to, but it may be best that she did) and comes to Shin-bee’s defence when it seems the boys’ taunting is going a bit too far. No one is really blameless in the argument that follows, but the upshot is a challenge: So-jin will put together a girls’ team, to settle things out on the pitch.

It’ll be hard to find a full 11 in just a couple of weeks, however, so after a little research by So-jin, the terms are changed: the contest will be a Futsal match–a 5-on-5 variant with a few rules changes, played on a much smaller field. Joon-suh, the boys’ captain, agrees to the terms and it’s on.

Now So-jin just has to find 4 other girls to round out the team.

The rest of volume one covers the recruitment drive, a few pages of practice, and then the first 15 minutes of the game. And ends with a cliff-hanger… (I’m glad I bought both volumes)

Volume two picks up right where we left off. Surprise substitutions on both sides and a hard-fought, bloody game take up about 170 pages of the second book, with a few hooks and foreshadowing to round things out and whet the appetite for volume three.

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Review:

And you thought soccer was boring.

The girls’ sports angle, and the showdown match with the guys, is going to draw inevitable comparisons between Angel Cup and Princess Nine. Except this isn’t baseball, the girls start out being better athletes, it’s manga as opposed to anime, and the guys-vs-girls match is in the first volume instead of being the climactic battle of the series.

So, yeah, nothing at all like Princess Nine, but I can understand the comparison. There’s a lot more blood in Angel Cup, too. Having personally taken more than my fair share of soccer balls to the front, back, and sides of my head (…explains a few things, perhaps) I feel every hit with a sense memory that just won’t go away. Even if you haven’t played football before, I think the hits will still have a visceral impact. It’s well drawn.

Though the action is good (and volume two is action packed) character motivation is the driving engine here. From the two main characters, through the entire girls’ line-up and the stars of the boys’ team, and down a couple of layers to even the bitty-est of bit characters, it seems everyone has a history, or an agenda, or both. Since a normal club is not 5 but 11 players (plus a bench) and since a fair amount of space is taken up by the nascent-league sub-plot, I’m guessing that in future volumes quite a few of these walking-thumbnail-sketches will step forward to become important characters in their own right.

For the first couple of books it seems like an awful lot of intrigue for what could be called “just a sports comic”. For the record: I’m not complaining. This promises to be some really good stuff.

Of course, I like women’s soccer. It helps when the hometown team was the Atlanta Beat, and the W-league club of the Silverbacks is still here to carry the torch. A manga (manhwa, actually, but I’ll split those hairs in a 5by8 at some point) that uses women’s soccer as a background while delving deep into troubled characters and looking into the larger struggles that women’s sport faces generally in the male-dominated world… It’s high drama. I’m looking forward to how this plays out.