Tag: manhua • BookLikes

review 2020-05-13 13:58

Psychic Princess (Tong Ling Fei) - Tencent Animation & Comics

If you love an easygoing, full of humour, historical but also with some supernatural elements and a romance to die for manga/manhwa/manhua then this is the right one to pick up.

Short summary in my own words:

The female protagonist, Qian Yunxi, was raised on a Mt. Lin Yun because she has the ability to see the supernatural which is deemed bad and that it brings bad luck. She is the prime minister's daughter and although she is the older sister she is a concubine's daughter so she is not held up to such high standards as the second sister who is the legitimate wife's child. Prime minister wants more power so he is not on great terms with the royal family so when the order comes that his daughter must marry one of the princes he sends the daughter he doesn't care about. Qian Yunxi accepts this proposal because she wants to get off the mountain. Marriage goes through and on the first night the prince tells her she is not wanted and there is one other he considers to be good enough to be his wife. Qian is sent to the worst rundown part of the palace. But for Qian, this is not so bad. She, as a wife, has enough freedom and yet, she doesn't need to do her marital duties. She takes this situation as a positive and with a positive attitude and extreme bravery slowly changes the lives of everyone around here, as well as the cold prince's heart.

My thoughts:

In my opinion, this is almost as good as it gets in this genre of manga or if you will, manhua or manhwa (manga not produced in Japan). It is on point of everything it presents itself to be. It is very funny (I laughed my heart out in the scene where she throws a chicken she purchased at the market, just trust me on this one, go read please), it is very romantic, it is serious when it needs to be, the supernatural element enriches the whole plot, it doesn't shy away from the political discussions and we come to the most important part perhaps - the heroine - she is amazing.

The heroine is truly a heroine. She is independent, she is extremely intelligent and capable, she knows how to handle herself in most situations, she is not a damsel in distress, she is the one who often saves those around her, she kicks as% and she has a pure heart. I have not come across such a capable and well written heroine in a very long time.
The prince starts off as an unlikable tyrant-like-bastard who is cold, ruthless and cunning but unwilling to deal with anything that doesn't personally benefit him. As the story develops we actually see that that is just a front. He has much more layers and a lot of the things he has done can be interpreted differently with the right context. He grows significantly when around our capable heroine. He has a great aura about him and the way he handles situations makes me giggle and blush like a little girl. But he has his vulnerable side too and later on we learn that he is actually much more innocent than we could ever have imagined. Now that is great character writing, totally takes you by surprise.
There are many more other characters who are more or less important, and more or less developed but I believe it is better left for the actual reading experience now that the basics have been laid out.

The romance is the type that makes your heart skip a beat, you blush and you also wish you were the heroine. Prince is the possessive type and I really honestly love that. I know some people don't and that is okay. We are all different. I respect people who say they don't like even a little jealousy or possessiveness but for me that is absolutely amazing. The prince takes care of our heroine and he would go to the depths of hell for her. Since this is a fictional story I think it is safe to enjoy it and savour it. Boy, is this romance delightful.

The Chinese setting and the animation style is absolutely beautiful. I enjoyed every single page, every single image. It is different, it is unique and it is definitely worthy of reading and admiring.

For the final note. The anime that was made based on this manga is pretty much faithful to the manga, although there are differences. As always, manga has much more details, much more characters, a lot of the special moments between our hero and heroine that anime just cannot condense the same in a dozen episodes. If you are interested in this story I would definitely say go first with the manga and then enjoy the anime rendition.

review 2015-02-07 18:22

The History of the West Wing (manhua) story by Sun Jiayu, art by Guo Guo, translated by J. Gustave McBride

Familiar Diversions

The History of the West Wing - Guo Guo,Jiayu Sun, J. Gustave McBride (Translator)

I came across this while looking through the offerings in Right Stuf's latest Yen Press sale. I had never heard of The History of the West Wing before, but its title caught my eye. Reviews indicated that the story would probably be mediocre. However, I fell in love with the artwork that came up when I did a quick Google Image Search, and Right Stuf's sale price was excellent, so I decided to get it anyway.

The History of the West Wing is an English translation of a Chinese graphic novel influenced by Wang Shifu's play, Xi Xiang Ji. The play, in turn, was influenced by a fable. I know this because Yen Press included a page of background information. I appreciated that page, but later decided I would have liked more. Additional cultural notes beyond the one or two footnotes would have been nice.

Now, on to the story. Chen Yuqing is a wandering scholar. Five years ago, he was in love with Mingyan, the daughter of the imperial secretary, but their relationship ended badly. He now believes that all young noble ladies are haughty and cold. He's the only one who isn't eagerly awaiting the upcoming ceremony at the temple of Buddha the Savior, and the possibility of seeing beautiful Pianpian, the minister's daughter.

However, a chance encounter with Pianpian intrigues Chen Yuqing. He arranges to meet with her in secret, and the two fall in love. Unfortunately, Pianpian's mother has arranged for her to marry Du Heng, the only son of Imperial Secretary Zheng Du. Chen Yuqing must prove his worth to Pianpian's mother and convince her to break off Pianpian's engagement to Du Heng.

I'll start with the good: the artwork is amazing. Guo Guo's linework and coloring is delicate and lovely. The image of Pianpian that you see on the cover is taken from the artwork in the story - this is not one of those cases where the cover art promises more than the interior art delivers.

There are 22 pages of illustrations at the end of the volume (18 full-page works and 2 double-page spreads), and I consider this graphic novel worth it for those pages alone. I wish I owned poster-sized copies of some of them. The story artwork is just as beautiful. The only complaint I had was that characters' faces weren't always very consistent. It was easier to keep track of everyone by noting hairstyles and clothing.

Now for the rest. As other reviewers have mentioned, the story is fairly weak. After spending five years moping over Mingyan, Chen Yuqing fell in love with Pianpian amazingly quickly. As for Pianpian, all it took was a moment or two for her to decide that Chen Yuqing wasn't like all the other men who'd tried to catch glimpses of her. They were a breathtakingly gorgeous couple, and more virtuous than Mingyan and Du Heng, but that was it. Honestly, had the "dropped handkerchief" scene gone a little differently, Chen Yuqing could just as easily have fallen in love with Xiaoyue, Pianpian's maid.

Much of the story's "action" happened off-page. For example, at one point, Pianpian, her mother, and the temple were being threatened by some soldiers. Pianpian's mother promised Pianpian's hand in marriage to whomever could save them all, so Chen Yuqing promptly disappeared and came back with an entire army. Readers were later told that he scaled a mountain in the middle of the night to find that army, but none of that was ever shown. The same went with Chen Yuqing's efforts to prove he'd be a good future husband by finally passing the imperial exams.

This is, at best, a mediocre graphic novel, and the romance boiled down to “two gorgeous and relatively virtuous young people fall immediately in love.” However, I knew going in not to expect too much from the story and instead bought it mostly as an artbook. In that respect, I'm very happy with this.

Rating Note:

If I could rate the story and artwork separately, I'd give the artwork 4.5 stars, and the story either 2.5 or 3 stars. I decided to give the artwork a bit more weight and settled on 4 stars.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Historical Romance China Yen Press Tang Dynasty China The History of the West Wing manhua influenced by chinese play guo guo sun jiayu j gustave mcbride pretty artwork