Snow Drop, Vol. 1, Chapter 3: Brotherly Love

At school later, it turns out Hae-Gi doesn't remember anything from his drunkfest at Romeo. The next day at school, he tries to give So-Na her nursery key back. Here, So-Na makes a critical mistake: as she's reaching for the key, she admits that she lost Hae-Gi's marble.

I know that characters making bad decisions is important for fiction, but the key is literally in her hand. All she had to do is make a fist, and it would be hers again. So-Na couldn't wait a whole ten seconds to tell him that she lost his marble. Hae-Gi snatches the key away and gets really, really mad at her. Reasonable, and  we get this one moment out of Hae-Gi, when he tells her that there's something she still needs to learn.

THANK YOU.

So-Na is so haughty, she's unlikable and unrelatable. I was pretty glad to see Hae-Gi cut her down to size here. Not that she learns her lesson.

What follows over the next few pages is some verbal barbs and taunting between the two. Because we all know that the foundation for a long, happy relationship is animosity. 

Instead of just apologizing and trying not to be a giant dick. So-Na dresses up like she's going clubbing and stalks Hae-Gi to the store where he works. Her plan appears to be to look good and demand her key back. As you might imagine, she fails.

Hae-Gi is more interested in cutting So-Na down to size, and will let give her her key back, if she mops and helps clean up the store. When she complains that she can't mop in her high-heeled shoes, Hae-Gi lends her his.

That would normally be a detail I wouldn't mention here, but So-Na wears his shoes home. When I first read that, I thought it was kind of cute, but now I see a big problem with it.

I don't think those will fit Hae-Gi.

What the hell is Hae-Gi going to wear home?!

I also want to point out that it's established that Hae-Gi is the "poor kid" who has two jobs to support his family. He shouldn't have to worry about a girl stealing his shoes when he has money troubles enough. So-Na, you're a jerk.

But there's something way more at stake here than just Hae-Gi's shoes.

Maybe an image like that isn't out of place in a romance series. At first So-Na thinks that the person with Hae-Gi is a sexy girlfriend Hae-Gi's been hiding. This is incorrect for two reasons, the first being that the long-haired person is actually a guy.

The second is that that guy is Hae-Gi's brother.

I wish I could insert a sound effect of brakes squealing, as that image makes my brain come to a sudden stop. Also, that brotherly almost kiss is explained, by...well, like this:

Okay, I get it, it was used for comedy, just to create some confusion for So-Na. But then Ha-Da comes along, sees Ko-Mo, and immediately falls in love. Neither Hae-Gi or So-Na bother to tell him that Ko-Mo's a boy.

Ha-Da doesn't find out that Ko-Mo's male until the fourth or fifth book in the series. Hae-Gi and So-Na let him think Ko-Mo's a girl for...who knows how long?

What great friends.

Anyway, So-Na got her key back, if anyone actually cares.

God, why am I reading this?

Snow Drop Vol. 1, Chapter 1: Meet the (Awful) Cast

I've decided that it was only fair to go back to manga for a bit, just because I have an absolutely absurd amount of it. I'm certain that I need to get rid of almost all of it. Even if I don't intend to keep it all, it's worth one last read-through. A final goodbye, if you will. I won't subject you to any more Rave Master for the time being, so we'll take a sharp turn to Snow Drop, by Choi Kyuang-ah. This is a series I started reading when I was fourteen, and religiously bought every book until the series ended, probably when I was sixteen. And for the purists out there, Snow Drop is technically manwha, as it's a Korean comic. And it couldn't be any more different than Rave Master.

Snow Drop is a dark, dramatic teen romance about a couple that no one thinks should be together. I'd read a few manga like this in the past, but I don't think I've ever read one as misguided as Snow Drop.

I almost immediately regretted my decision to re-read this book as soon as I opened it. There are so many problems with the series, and you'd think that would be pretty easy material to make fun of. It has an astounding number of things in it that don't make any sense, like the belief that who you date in high school is who you'll end up marrying and having kids with. There's also several things that are pretty offensive but passed off as "true love"...like the female lead dating the guy who tried to rape her earlier in the series.

Holy hell, how did I manage to stomach any of this?

Unfortunately for the blog (or maybe fortunately), none of this happens in the first volume. This is our introduction to our main characters: So-Na, Ha-Da, and Hae-Gi. And I don't like any of them. I know I should, but I don't.

So-Na is our female lead,  a rich seventeen-year-old girl whose passion is her flower nursery, named Snow Drop. She's almost always accompanied by her obnoxious friend Ha-Da, another rich teenager and self-proclaimed Casanova. The manga kicks off with Ha-Da complaining that he and So-Na have been enrolled in high school, as neither of them have been in school for several years. So-Na's father basically blackmailed her into returning to school by smashing the windows of the greenhouse, and refusing to stop until she agreed to go back. It's pretty telling for a character that doesn't even appear in this volume.

My questions already begin to flare up when the two are introduced to their class for the first time. If Ha-Da and So-Na are part of such wealthy and influential families, why aren't they sent to an expensive private school? One small change would have helped us avoid a lot of needless stupidity in the series.

I also want to point out that I hate the "new kid stands in front of class and introduces her/himself" cliche. This is mainly because never once, in my life, have I ever seen a teacher call a student to the front of the class to introduce them. Especially not in high school. Has anyone else actually seen this happen? Right now, I'm pretty convinced that this exists only in fiction.

This being a romance manga, So-Na's seat in class ends up being right next to Hae-Gi's, the most popular boy in school. I would like to make a couple complaints about this.

This is what the cover promises:

This is what we get:

Okay, he's cute, but that is not the same person. And that beautiful blue-haired man was the reason I became interested in the series in the first place. Though thinking about it now, I actually didn't fangirl over any of the characters in this series. Maybe I was over squeeing over fictional characters by that point, or maybe it was because they were all in relationships and therefore untouchable. Really, though, I think it's because all the characters are dicks.

Looking through the series now, I searched for a character that I really liked, without reservation. I found one: So-Na's body guard, and I don't think he even has a name.

Even if the cast is full of jerks, though, there must have been something about it that I liked enough to buy twelve volumes of this crap, so let's read on.

The other thing that bugs me about Hae-Gi's introduction is that he's called the most popular boy in school. Maybe this is a translation error, because Hae-Gi has zero friends. By definition, you have to have friends to be popular. He's good looking, and a model, so I would accept that he's the coolest kid in school, but definitely not the most popular. One of the nameless students (read: someone who's not beautiful) even says that he's standoffish and uptight about his name.

Ha-Da hates Hae-Gi immediately, for no adequately explored reason, and asks So-Na to figure out what Hae-Gi's sore spot is. As luck would have it, So-Na is actually able to do this. Hae-Gi is short for Hae-Ba-Ra-Gi, or "sunflower". His brothers, likewise, have flowery names. Those names (along with So-Na's, short for So-Na-Moo, or "pine tree") came from a book So-Na's mother wrote, which is also entitled Snow Drop.

If you're asking where So-Na's mother is, by the way, she's dead. Like all romantic heroine's mothers.

 So-Na, it turns out, also doesn't like Hae-Gi because he's not interested in floral language, after she tries to sell him some flower.

While making his big, obnoxious introduction, Ha-Da invites all the kids in his new class for a party at a nightclub, Romeo, which he happens to own. And proceeds to insult the students that might not be able to go.

So-Na comes up with a game to ensure that everyone goes to the club, and I want to say right now that she's surprisingly manipulative. You'd think that a girl who spent the last five years with just one friend would be a little more...obtuse when it comes to that sort of thing.

The game is this: you have to find your seatmate's most precious item and take it from them for the day. The students will exchange everything back at Romeo, but if you don't show up, then you don't get your item back. Of course, So-Na ends up picking Hae-Gi's most precious item, which turns out to be a marble with a feather in it. So-Na, though, doesn't play by the rules of her own game, until Ha-Da rats her out.

You know, I sort of like Ha-Da better for doing that. I can handle annoying side-kicks; it's the manipulative main character I'm having a hard time getting past.

A flower. She tried to
insult him by calling him
a flower.

Thanks to So-Na's game, the entire class winds up at Romeo, and So-Na refuses to switch back the marble for her key until the designated swap time at 8 pm, even though Hae-Gi wants to get his marble back as soon as he can. Which is weird, because she really did not want Hae-Gi to get her key in the first place. You'd think she'd be in a hurry to get it back and not linger around Hae-Gi, especially because she doesn't like him all that much.

As she's playing with the marble she drops it and ends up losing it in the one place she can't get it back. I think I'm supposed to worry about So-Na not getting her key back, but I don't. I don't like So-Na, and she could have avoided this stupidity had she just exchanged items when Hae-Gi wanted. Maybe if she was more likable I might actually care what happens to her.

God, this is stupid. Why did I choose to read this series again?

Rave Master, Vol. 2 Chapter 10-11: In Your Eyes

Chapter 10 starts with Haru and Elie meeting up, both happy to tell the other that they've found Musica, which might have resulted in some kind of "Who's on first" comedy, if not for the fact that our heroes get interrupted by Demon Card goons. Haru, Hot-or-Not Musica and Elie start fighting with the mooks, though Elie is quickly rendered useless when her tonfa blasters stop working.

There are also puns.

I love a good pun (is that an oxymoron?), but this just made me groan, and I'm pretty sure the thirteen-year-old version of me was rolling her eyes as well. The trio seem to be in a tight spot, but are saved by a drunken Plue, stabbing his nose into their feet. Why no one thought to kick a small, uncoordinated animal is beyond me. Did their sisters also teach them you shouldn't be cruel to animals?

Once Haru, Elie, and Musica #2 are out of danger, Musica reveals that his family was killed in an accident years ago, and the blacksmith is clearly a fraud. I think this is supposed to build tension, but if you've ever watched an anime or read a manga, you already know that the two Musicas are going to be long-lost something or others, and probably have special powers because of that.

Anyway, it turns out Haru did leave the Rave stone with Musica the Blacksmith, because...

You met the guy twenty minutes ago, and he was horribly, horribly drunk. You've been attacked, and have been told that the country only gets more dangerous as you travel. WHY THE HELL DID YOU GIVE HIM THE RAVE STONE?!

I'll let Musica the Blacksmith sum up my thoughts on this chapter:

Moving on to chapter 11, we get our first glimpse of Lance. He wastes no time in kidnapping Elie, and this is where I realize that she'll probably be pretty useless for the rest of the series. From what I remember, another volume of Rave Master consists of almost nothing but Elie needing Haru to rescue her. I don't remember a lot of the series aside from some scenes that really stood out, but I really, really hope that she won't be the damsel in distress all time time. Lance gives Haru two hours to bring him the Rave stone, or he'll kill Elie. Because this is still early in the series, there's no real need to be original, right?

Haru goes back to Musica the Blacksmith to get his sword repaired, only to find Musica being attacked by mooks. Musica says that he's hidden the Rave somewhere they'll never find it. To me, that sounds like a secret hiding spot, maybe someplace in his disused forge, or underneath a floorboard, or maybe Musica has a secret room full of awesome swords that he's forged in the past. Or, you know, in a drawer in plain view of everyone.

The goons are cleared out with a couple punches and Haru explains the situation to Musica. Musica initially refuses to fix the Ten Powers sword, citing that he's old and washed up. That doesn't take a keen observer to see. Haru convinces Musica to forge a sword again, not by impressing upon him the need to have a weapon and save Elie's life--but because he believes in him. 

I've read a lot of manga in my time, and this is a medium that truly believes that eyes are the windows to the soul. "You still love him, I can see it in your eyes." Or, "You're strong, I see it in your eyes." Or, perhaps most shojo of all, "You've got fire in your eyes." It seems like a cool sentiment the first time you read it, but then you read it over, and over, and over again. It would seem that all you need to perform a small miracle in the face of insurmountable odds is to look deeply into someone's eyes and tell them what you see there. In this case, its "You're better than that. I can see it in your eyes."

Musica isn't so readily swayed by Haru's Peter Gabriel-esque charm, but decides to fix the sword when he learns that Haru will be fighting Lance. Lance, it turned out, killed Musica's entire family.

When I was a kid, I thought Lance was evil, evil, evil. He killed Musica's family for no reason! How much worse could you get?

And that's the problem with Lance that I see as a grown-up. He had no characteristics other than being a psychopath. He is evil for the sake of being evil. He reasons behind it, his motivations, are never further explored. The only backstory we have on this guy is that he killed Musica's family.

I'm not against fictional psychopathic characters, as long as they're interesting. There are plenty of well-written characters who are evil for shits 'n' giggles, the kind that give you chills when you think about how anyone could be that coldblooded. Not Lance. If we knew anything about him other than "I like to kill things", maybe he could have been a great villain. Instead, he just falls flat.

Rave Master Vol. 2, Chapters 7-8: My Sister Taught Me That!

Haru was mostly raised by his older sister, and he really took whatever she taught him to heart. I know this, because he's always talking about, "my sister taught me that!" I remember that he said something along those lines a lot early in the series, and I remember that it really annoyed me. Possibly because I was thirteen when I first read these books, and therefore my older sister - if you were to ask me - was an idiot. Re-reading these now, it still bugs me a little bit. Not because Haru's taking his older sister's advice, but because he mentions "my sister told me..." so often. The other reason is because everything that Haru's sister has taught him is completely obvious.

Take a drink every time Haru talks about what his sister taught him.

Really, Haru? Dogs are getting impaled on spikes and exploded, but you need your sister's advice to figure out that animal cruelty is bad?

Despite Elie's warnings, Haru interrupts the race again. This was Georco's plan all along, of course: to put Plue in the dangerous race and lure Haru out. Now, there is one thing, and one thing only I will applaud Georco on: he learned from his mistakes. Instead of fighting Haru out in the open, where another explosion could blow his gaseous form away, Georco traps him in a giant steel box with no way out - in other words, no fresh air for Haru to breathe. It kind of begs the question why Georco had a giant, ten foot tall box laying around in the first place, but I can forgive that, because the ridiculous trap was pretty effective. However, I cannot forgive Georco for constantly referring to it as the "Smoke Hiz-ouse". A part of me died every time I had to read that phrase.

 Without oxygen, Haru can't make explosions, and so it looks like he's screwed.

The day is saved by Elie, and I love that, purely because it's the girl saving the guy, and not the other way around. She uses her tonfa blasters (which are like side-arm cannons, I actually like them) to blow up the smoke house to let Haru escape. Plue manages to steal Georco's dark bring, so he can no longer turn himself into gas. Out in the open again, Haru delivers the final blow to Georco, thus finishing our first Monster of the Week.

With all the action, there wasn't a lot of plot in Chapter 7, so we'll move on to Chapter 8.

Now that Georco's been taken down, Haru and Elie take a minute to talk. Of course, this is after Elie nearly blows up half the stadium with her tonfa blasters.

That's actually good advice, Haru. Don't stick it in crazy.

It turns out the Elie knows where to find Musica, the blacksmith that can repair Haru's sword. She also reveals what little there is to reveal about her backstory: she has lost her memory. It's a tired trope at this point, but what I like about Elie is that she's not angsty about it. There's plenty of "waaah, I can't remember!" characters out there, but Elie is happy, excitable, and generally a fun character, rather than being mopey about it. She doesn't take up too much time feeling sorry for herself, which is nice to see. Yes, she would like her memory back, but she's also not going to let herself be miserable over it.

Haru and Elie decide to leave Hip Hop Town together. They say that Demon Card is out of commission, so they won't have to pay the fee to leave. But how does punching the daylights out of Georco take down an evil organization that's clearly taken over the town? I'm sure Georco has some underlings who would gladly take over his role as boss. Or maybe that's the end of dog racing in Hip Hop Town forever because Elie completely destroys the stadium. 

Seriously. She's so excited to be leaving town with Haru that she lets off another couple shots from her tonfa blaster and the stadium starts to collapse. Her reason: 

THAT IS A TERRIBLE WAY TO EXPRESS HAPPINESS.

The duo escape the stadium by...jumping on a chariot pulled by dogs. I'm not joking. This whole series is so goofy, though, that I think I've learned just to go with it by now.

We're nearly at the end of the chapter, but there's just one more thing I want to bring up. We get a brief cutaway to some of Demon Card's generals, hanging out in the fortress Rhapsodia. 

This is when it hit me.

Rhapsodia, like "rhapsody". Song continent. Hip Hop Town and Punk Street.

THE TOWNS ARE ALL NAMED AFTER MUSIC GENRES.

Ever since I was a kid I thought that all the town names in Rave Master were really dumb. And I never once thought there was a musical motif in the names. HOW THE HELL DID I MISS THAT?

It turns out the town names aren't dumb; I am.

Rave Master, Volume 2, Chapter 5: Introduction

Through junior high, high school, and early college, I was an otaku. That phrase itself dates me, as I believe the acceptable term today is "weeaboo." The point being, for a long while I was an anime and manga fan, and was probably pretty obnoxious about it.

Being an anime geek when I was growing up wasn't like it is today. You couldn't go down to FYE and buy a DVD of your favorite show, and Netflix didn't exist, so you bought box sets from eBay with your parents' credit card. If you wanted merchandise - a t-shirt, a plushie - you were probably out of luck, unless you were looking for pokémon.

If you went to my school, there were a few rules you had to follow. You had to hide your nerdiness away. That meant you didn't hang up pictures of your favorite anime characters in your locker, you didn't talk about your favorite shows to people who weren't otaku, and you definitely didn't bring your manga to school. Naturally, I broke all these rules. When you're so unpopular most of your classmates don't bother to register your existence, you haven't got much to lose.

So it was in eighth grade, the worst time of anyone's life, when I discovered manga. The second volume of Rave Master was one of the first mangas I ever owned, and I remember loving the series. My older sister read it as well, but declared that it was dumb. More than a decade later, I've started re-reading it to determine who was right.

I never actually owned the first volume of Rave Master, but I remember it well enough. It starts with our hero, Haru, living with his older sister on a small island. Haru is an orphan because of course he is. While fishing one day, Haru catches a creature named Plue, which looks like a snowman with four legs, though is frequently referred to as a dog. Plue is the bearer of Rave, a magical stone that was broken into pieces at the end of a war to stop something called the Overdrive, or a really large explosion.

Plue is shortly joined by Shiba, an old man with a spike on his head. The spike really bothered me, until I realized it was a tuft of hair that made him resemble a unicorn.

Shiba, it turns out, is the current Rave Master. That is, the only person who can use the Rave stones. With Shiba also comes Demon Card, the evil organization that's searching for Rave. Eventually, it's discovered that Haru is the new Rave Master, and now he must find all the pieces of Rave and defeat Demon Card. Because we can't have a manga series starring an old man now, could we? That would be ridiculous!

Near the end of the book, the Ten Powers sword breaks, and Haru leaves his island to find Musica, the blacksmith that first forged the sword, to repair it. Haru and Plue set sail for the seas of adventure, and that's where the first volume ends.

Got all that? Good.

Dusting off the second book, I realized that the art wasn't as good as I remember. Certainly, it's much better than I could do, but the characters' necks just look way too thin to support their heads. Or is that just part of the anime style of art that I've forgotten about? Of course, I shouldn't be too harsh when the characters from my all-time favorite manga, Dragon Knights, look like this:

Huckleberry Finn Haru and Plue land in Hip Hop Town, and I really like the weird world that the manga-ka, Hiro Mashima, has built for us. The panels can be a bit cluttered because there's a lot going on, and Mashima's slipped small background events in. I also want to point out these guys:

The sun and moon, to show time passing. I completely forgot they were in the manga, but I thought they were hilarious as a kid and I love them now. Don't ask me why.

After getting on shore, Plue promptly gets kidnapped. After a thrilling two pages of Haru searching around town, he finds Plue has been entered into dog races, which are a pretty big deal in town. Okay, I can go with it. What I cannot get past is why someone would actually think that Plue is (a) a dog, and (b) would be any good in a race. This is what the racing dogs look like:

This is Plue.

 Plue gets taken off the track for being the worst racing dog ever, and Haru interrupts the race and comes to his rescue, in a mad dash for the arena that would make Legolas proud. I still can't decide if using non-skateboard things as a skateboard is amazing or stupid. I'm probably going to go with stupid.

Haru beats up some mooks causes enough commotion that the head of the dog racing rink finally appears, who is...*gasp* a member of Demon Card!! So here we have Monster of the Week #1, Georco. Thus ends chapter 5 of Rave Master.

It wasn't that good. I did like that Haru got completely lost in Hip Hop Town while looking for Plue, which is what I would expect from someone visiting a large city for the first time. There's some world building already, and it's pretty fast-paced so far, so it's easy to keep my attention. Right now I kind of find Haru loud and obnoxious, but maybe that's because the only character he's interacted with thus far (that he wasn't beating up) is some kind of animal that doesn't talk.

Speaking of Haru beating up mooks, where did he learn how to fight? For a sixteen-year-old kid from a small, peaceful town, he sure knows how to throw a punch. By the time Georco shows up, he's already taken down about ten other people. As a kid, that seemed perfectly acceptable to me. As an adult, I realize that it's completely ridiculous unless Haru got a blackbelt before the series started.

Geez, all these things you don't think of when you're reading something for the first time.