Legend, Vol. 1
Published by: Ice Kunion
Writer: Woo SooJung
Artist: KARA

196 (176) pages.
Original Language: Korean
Orientation: Left to right
Vintage: 2004. US edition November 2006.
Translation: HyeYoung Im
Adaptation: J. Torres
Retouch & Lettering: Terri Delgado & Marshall Dillon
Graphic Design: EunKyung Kim
(six editors, including Im, Torres, and Dillon, previously cited.)
Publisher’s Rating: Teen Age 13+

Rating: 1 out of 5

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Premise: Delinquent student Eun-Gyo Sung gets suspended from school, locked out of the house after she “runs away” long enough for Mom’s temper to cool down, and now she’s being kidnapped and dragged 1000 or so years into the past by a handsome stranger. All in one day.

Synopsis:

And the Premise blurb nicely summarizes chapter one. In chapter two, Eun-Gyo adapts quickly (really quickly) to finding herself transported to the past, in a fashion that totally upsets and frustrates her “captor”, No-Ah Joo. The pair quickly get into a mess because of mysterious occurrences in the village they delorean into. It’s a strange village; everyone there is a child [*cue low-key but creepy background music*]. They run into a child fleeing the local guard, barely have time to introduce themselves, before they are caught and jailed for “helping” in the attempted escape.

I’d tell you more about this second chapter, since one might assume that the story would really get started now the Eun-Gyo and No-Ah are in his proper time, but it seems to be a side quest, and has nothing to do (yet) with any of the plot points alluded to in chapter one. (These are fairly long chapters, 70+ pages each, so two is all we get)

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Review:

To be fair, I should probably reserve judgement until after I’ve read volume two (which releases at the end of the month). To be fair, I probably will read it even though I found this volume to be disjointed and confusing, with a couple a characters I can’t bring myself to care too much about.

Each of the two leads is defined by only the broadest of bush-strokes, and minor characters seem to be cardboard cut-outs, at least so far. The whole second chapter is told non-sequentially, with scenes jumping time and POV in a way that makes me wonder if my copy is some kind of printing error; since none of the pages are numbered, there is no way for me to be sure. It could be intentional, building suspense with foreshadowing and all that jazz, but it makes no sense.

The art is pretty good– much more polished than say, Zero Six. If you like long flowing hair and big liquid eyes, then the character designs will likely appeal to you. That plus the decently rendered backgrounds and action, along with the frequent splash pages featuring full-page character art will be enough to pull you along to the end of the volume. The slightly larger (5.5×8in.) format and the fact that nearly every panel bleeds out to the edge of the page make this a big, beautiful book. Very pretty.

However, this particular style is a little too far down the “pretty” end of the spectrum for my taste. The lack of anything deeper in the characters for me to latch onto makes the two leads seem even more superficial: all whipped cream and icing, no cake.

And if you don’t have much of a sweet tooth for the romance fantasy time-travel adventure genre of manhwa/manga to begin with, it’s best to steer clear. I’m only giving Legend, Vol. 1 a single mark, out of five.