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Reviewed by Chloe Ferguson A young girl is kidnapped by her father’s political enemies…a bride-to-be embarks on a journey to her new home, but her escort has other plans…and a tough boy falls for the orphan girl he’s supposed to protect… In these moving, poetic stories, people are often not what they seem, while love comes from where you least expect it. If there’s one great term to encompass Yeon-Joo Kim’s standalone volume Nabi The prototype, it would be “halfway.” The art is there, the elements are there- now if only the author could pull them together a little more cohesively and imbue them with a soul, we might have something. Instead, flowing art and rhapsodizing character monologues struggle to hide one glaring fact; in the manga diet, Nabi is empty calories. The first two stories, clocking in at roughly twenty pages, can be summarized rather thoroughly by simply reading the back summary alone. In this sense, Yeon-Joo Kim has wisely avoided cramming an overly complex plot into a twenty page container, choosing instead to focus on the simple elements and allow them to speak for themselves. Unfortunately, twenty page oneshots also mean that there’s little or no character development, leaving Kim to fall back on her own storytelling talents and a blasé mixture of character archetypes to convey the moral du jour. It’s in the last four intertwined stories that Kim’s talents at pulling it all together stumble; while all the stories share continuity by being “in universe,” the last four explore the complex relationship between two characters over a series of years. Time lapses back and forth between childhood and adolescence, perspectives are reversed and similar elements are respun between the four stories which, ultimately, cover very little literary distance and feel overlong. Kim’s art, however, speeds things along nicely and reflects some of the naturalistic sensibilities present in the stories they illustrate. Impossibly ideal, reed-thin characters permeate panels that reflect a distinctly Asian sensibility in dress and architecture. You’ll never find art to detract from the story, but there’s little incentive to linger either. My one biggest gripe with the English formatting of the book is the way some of the stories are differentiated from one another; the font used to mark the title is little different from that of the standard dialogue, which, when coupled with the same characters in each tale, led me to read on into the first pages of one chapter only to backtrack when I found myself mystified. Readers looking for something to pass the time between favorite volumes or who find themselves gravitating to shorter narratives may want to give Nabi a shot, but for now, it remains depressingly bland and ultimately forgettable. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
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