nauseatedMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a truly odd manhwa. It revolves around Laon a nine hundred year old nine-tail fox, a gumiho who has lost its tails. Trapped on earth, the fox is searching for her tails, enlisting the help of Tae-Ha Kwon, a journalist for a conspiracy theory/supernatural happenings newspaper. For his part, Tae-Ha has holes in his memory he’s trying to fill and he is both baffled by and attracted to Laon which causes him a lot of distress for several reasons; he knows Laon is a gumiho, that Laon’s sexuality is fluid having both breasts and penis alternating or together for that matter and that Laon appears to be a barely pubescent child.
In covering a story about a new cult, Tae-Ha and Laon meet another reporter and a lovely young woman in the cult. Laon has her own concerns as various hwan, parasitic demons want to eat her and collect 900 years of power. Laon, for her part, will gladly eat them.
Later in the story, the young cultist turns up raped and beaten and in a rather unrealistic scene (or I hope it is, knowing nothing of police procedures in Korea but I can’t imagine they’re this insensitive), multiple reporters show up at the crime scene, trampling evidence and trying to interview her, bloodied and traumatized, before the police even get to her. Afterwards obituaries for these reporters show up one at a time saying how the reporter will die and then they do.
Laon is creepy, fascinating and just plain strange. The sexual attraction between Laon nd Tae-Ha (if it even is that on Laon’s part. S/he might just be using Tae-Ha as an energy source drawing it out via kisses, a common trope in manga) has a pedophilic feel to it, even if she is supposed to be centuries old. Laon is drawn acting very animalistic, recognizable canine poses predominate the art which both cool and unsettling. I do like this but it is quite different.
What I didn't like was the way the rape victim was treated. It was obvious that it needed to happen to make the storyline work but I could do without that sort of thing. It almost stopped me cold.
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