Deja Vu Vol. #01 - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

By Sakura Eries     March 06, 2008
Release Date: January 30, 2008



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Youn In-wan/various
Translated by:Woo Sok Park
Adapted by:N/A

What They Say
Lovers meet under strange circumstances and experience the romance of a lifetime... only to watch it all come to a tragic end. Yet each of the stories in this collection lives beyond its lifetime. Hence the deja vu of love throughout the ages.

The Review
Packaging:
The cover design features one of Yang Kyung-Il's panel drawings of Wonsul and Sohyul from page 18. The two are wearing period Korean clothing and look at one another thoughtfully as they kneel in a river. The illustration is uncolored and is set against a patchwork background of different colors, mostly shades of blue. The title logo is rendered in wide yellow paintbrush strokes and placed near the top. Just above the title logo is the author's name in plain black text, and just below it is the subheader, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter," in black text against an orange background. The Tokyopop logo is printed at the top left hand corner in blue.

On the back cover, the patchwork of color panels and the placement of the author's name, title logo, and subheader are identical to the front. At center is a content description in plain black font, and towards the bottom are age and genre icons in red and the ISBN code.

In addition to the main four-part feature story, Déjà Vu, this book also includes two additional short works by Youn In-Wan: Utility and Ocean. Although there is only one author for the stories, six different artists contributed to the manhwa, and each chapter/short story is preceded by a short blurb about the artist and his/her works. This title also includes opening words from the author, an afterword by CLAMP, an afterword by comic artist Jae Dong Park, and an afterword by featured artist Lee Vin. Binding is a little too close on some pages, and the alignment on a few pages is off.

Artwork:
Because there are six different artists with six dramatically styles, I decided not to give an overall art rating for this title. Instead, I'll give a brief description of each artist's style.

Yang Kyung-il, "Spring": This artist utilizes a good variety of different perspectives (close-ups, zoom outs, flashbacks). Character designs and backgrounds are painstakingly detailed, but animals are much simpler in comparison. While characters' expressions are movingly depicted, their facial features change so much that a single character looks like a completely person from emotion to emotion.

Yoon Seung-Ki, "Summer": Character designs are clean and simple with round faces and eyes and could easily be taken for a Japanese artist's work.

Kim Tae-Hyung, "Fall": Realistically proportioned characters in a style reminiscent of American-comic book drawings. Illustrations are meticulously detailed all around from the San Francisco scenery to the Star Wars costumes to the wrinkles in Hawk in the Cloud's face.

Park Sung-Woo, "' Winter": Clean lines, good tone work. Characters are drawn with larger eyes, round faces, tiny narrow noses, and impossibly perfect physiques.

Byun Byung-Jun, "Utility": The most poorly drawn in the group in my opinion. The sketchy penwork comes off as rough and sloppy. However, the chilling expressions and the lackluster eyes of his characters are good match for the disturbing content of the story.

Lee Vin, "Ocean": Cleanly drawn, but short on details. Lines are strong and bold, and much of her artwork uses a strong contrast of black and white.

Text/Translation:
All Korean sound effects are untranslated. There are few places where the text on signs is translated with overlays, but for the most part, signs and other text are left untouched. Korean honorifics are used in "Spring," and English equivalents are used where applicable in the other stories. Margin notes are presented in an extremely tiny text, and the text is also tiny and crowded in a few panels and bubbles. Regarding dialogue translation, characters' personalities come through extremely well in "Fall," especially with Hawk in the Cloud's mumbo-jumbo and Kim's hip-hop speak, and the quality is about average for the rest of the stories.

Content:
When the disgraced Korean warrior Wonsul meets the beautiful but enigmatic Sohyul on Mount Suri, it seems as if they are destined for one another. But their love is opposed by Sohyul's powerful grandmother. Undeterred, Wonsul defies Sohyul's grandmother and swears that even death will not end his love for Sohyul. Sohyul's and Wonsul's story comes to a tragic end, but Wonsul's oath remains true. The love of the starcrossed pair endures, and their souls meet time and again -- in World War II Japan, modern-day San Francisco, and far in the distant future. They are forever irresistibly drawn to one another, but their love seems fated never to be fulfilled...

Comments
Déjà Vu reads like a collection of short stories although it is a multi-chapter single work written by a single author. The fact that different artists are used for every episode, the characters and settings change in every chapter, and two unrelated short stories are included in the book as extras only heightens that impression. For someone interested in manhwa, Déjà Vu is an excellent way to get a broad sampling of Korean art and artists in a single book.

Regarding the actual Déjà Vu storyline, it is essentially a Romeo and Juliet story combined with reincarnation. The opening chapter recycles a lot of old themes; it is reminiscent of Asian folktales involving mortal men falling in love with magical beings. However, Déjà Vu becomes much more interesting in the subsequent chapters, primarily due to the circumstances under which Youn subjects his characters. Although only a single chapter is allocated to each meeting, the author somehow manages to present a fully rounded story every time. For those who love their love stories short and tragic this may be worth picking up. My only criticism regarding his plot is that I find it bizarre that Susan, who lives and works in San Francisco and was presumably raised by American parents in America, would yell for help in Korean while being mugged in San Francisco.

A quick warning. Déjà Vu is an angsty romance, and Ocean is also a short romantic work. Utility is not. Utility is rather disturbing actually. That story is a kind of social commentary where children emotionlessly make chilling decisions in an extremely gruesome situation.

Rated older teen for swearing, violence, nudity, and a disturbing scene involving a corpse in Utility.