With such atrocious cooking skills, how will Alice ever catch herself a husband?
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Ha SiHyun
Translation: HyeYoung Im
Adaptation: Arthur Dela Cruz
What They Say
At first glance, you would think that Alice Song is living a dream! Winning a manhwa creator contest, getting her work published in a magazine, and being an assistant to the famous and successful manwha idol Patrick Kang--what more could a high school girl ask for? But things don't seem so rosy when Alice's high school rival Daria starts putting the moves on Patrick. Still more complications arise when the super hot dancer Neil enters the picture. How will this new boy in her life change Alice's growing feelings toward Patrick?
The Review!
This volume got off to a promising start, but it degenerated quickly after Alice catches Neil in the act. In the act of what wasn’t really clear until after reading the bonus side story that’s included, so it’s no wonder Alice jumped to the wrong conclusion like she did. Falling asleep under a piano in the music room at school, she is jolted awake after Neil starts undressing while practicing some killer dance moves. Not only does he look like a scrawny bag of skin and bones, but Alice immediately assumes that he’s intruded on her nap to molest her. She then beats him with a music stand until he’s unconscious, after which she decides he’s hawt and ponders what to do with his still form. She then touches his bare chest, gets dizzy, and thinks, “ This is the first man I have touched, other than my dad, of course.” Of course?! I don’t think I want to know what kind of relationship Alice has with her father.
Daria has fallen head over heels for Patrick (why don’t any of the characters have Korean names?), and she is scheming all out to snag him for her boyfriend. Too bad Patrick’s not interested. When Daria sees Alice and Patrick together while practically stalking the lad, she manages to put two and two together and figures out that Alice is Patrick’s assistant, and that Patrick’s pen name is Saturn Kang. Yeah! Now she has all the ammo she needs to snare him in her trap!
When the book was about Daria plotting to make Patrick fall in love with her, I started to enjoy it. Daria is like a flea; she’s persistent, irritating, and out for blood. She will do anything to get her man, including throwing her best buddy, Alice, under the bus. Lying to Patrick, she makes him think that Alice has confided in her about everything that has happened between them, effectively driving a wedge between the manhwa-ga and his bumbling assistant. And she cooks way better than Alice, so that’s got to be worth a few brownie points, ‘cause everybody knows that a guy can’t fall in love with a girl who cooks a poorly as Alice.
The jealousy and the backstabbing is fairly entertaining, as is the tense interaction between Patrick and Alice. Patrick really, really likes Alice, but being arrogant and rather dense, he just can’t come out and tell her. Instead, he resorts to teasing her, but because Alice is feeling extremely inferior to her beautiful friend who has the cooking skills of a gourmet chef, the teasing always ends up as fighting. If only Alice wasn’t so dense herself! Plus, Patrick believes that Alice has pimped him out and has informed Daria about his secret life as a popular comic book artist. That little misunderstanding, and Alice’s inability to tell time when she’s taking a heavy-duty catnap, opens up a huge rift between them. So does Daria’s bag of homemade donuts. And yes, they really do bring up cooking and donuts that much in this volume.
In Summary:
While I enjoyed this volume of Comic better than the last, I am having a hard time mustering up much enthusiasm for the series. It is chugging along like a little tugboat in storm tossed waves, swerving here and there, out of control from the force of the swells. Ha SiHyun goes off on weird tangents that are supposed to add humor, but most fall short of the mark. Sudden shifts in perspective also jar the reader out of the story, though I will give it a few bonus points because it features DDR, though since they are in Korea, it was probably really Pump it Up that they were playing. Think this review is random? Try reading Comic.
LOGIN
REGISTER
RSS
HOME
