Fighting!! Guidance Vol. #01

By Jarred Pine     July 20, 2005
Release Date: August 15, 2005



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Writer: Keuk-Jin Jeon / Artist: Hye-in Eom
Translated by:Je-Wa Jeong
Adapted by:

What They Say
Fighting!! Guidance takes you into the life of Ghi-Han, a former delinquent who decided to wash his hands clean of pointless fights.  He gives up the life as one of the highest ranked regional fighters to go to a good school start anew… but of course fate would have it that he ends up being dragged into fights one way or another.  Join Ghi-Han and his newly found best friend, Hyun-ha in an action packed comedy drama that’ll keep you guessing!

The Review
Much like the yanki manga out there, the Korean manwha Fighting!! Guidance explores the interesting organized and political hierarchy of school gangs, keeping the mood light with promises of a darker future ahead.

Packaging:
The more Infinity stuff I read, the more I begin to feel real torn about their packaging. What I like are the 8 color pages at the front of the book, the translator notes explaining the cultural aspects of the story, and the brightly colored cover featuring our two main protagonists. The notes and the color pages are something I’d love to see in more releases, and the colors on the cover are some of the sharpest I’ve seen in translated manwha. The English logo is a bit generic and cheap-looking, but the cover still looks great.

What bothers me is the paper quality, printing, and overall super-stiffness of the book. The paper is really thin, with a lot of bleeding and see-through action going on. It’s not uncommon to see what is going on in the panels behind the page you are reading. The pages are also extremely white, almost blinding me when I tried to read it in the sunlight. This also makes the tones appear to be a bit too shiny. The tones do look quite crisp and clean, with a couple small areas of fading.

Art:
The line and tone work is pretty clean, even if the character art feels a bit generic. The backgrounds are frequently filled in, helping at perspective especially during the fight scenes. If a character is getting pummeled in the alleyway, I want to feel it! The action art goes both ways. In some scenes it’s well laid out with some nice face-smashing effects. In others the impacts are done with a white explosion effect that kind of cheapens the appeal of fighting artwork.

Text/SFX:
SFX are translated and subbed in such a way that I can’t say I’m a fan of this method. The English SFX try to mimic the JP text, making them appear bigger than they need to be, as well as sometimes being placed nowhere near the original text. It just creates a cluttered feeling that I really don’t like.

The dialogue retains some of the cultural respect words like “Sunbe” and “Hoobae”, with notes in the margin about the meanings. The translation reads just fine with no errors.

Contents (Watch out spoilers ahead):
High school gangs and delinquent violence is something that plagues schools not just in North America, but in many other countries as well. However, what if school gangs actually helped with maintaining a sense of order and prevented constant clashing and fighting between students. In a sense this is what happens at some Korean middle and high schools. More commonly seen in Japanese manga referred to as yanki, such as DMP’s Worst, this is the first Korean manwha I’ve read that explores this unique political structure between school gangs.

Poong Rim High School is one of the most competitive schools to get accepted into. However, even the most elite schools have their gangs, and at Poong Rim High School these gangs still have to answer to the Guidance Club, which features the top honors students that serve as role models for other students and maintain order. Not only good in grades and other scholastics, the members of the Guidance Club are also martial arts experts, necessary for keeping its student body in line.

Hyung-ha is a small first year student who is trying to do his best as an interim member of the Guidance Club, hoping to make it as a permanent representative in the future. He is very serious in nature and has a bit of a self-esteem problem, constantly trying to prove his masculinity to himself. His life at Poong Rim gets a bit more stressful when a new transfer student, Ghi-Han, ends up in his class. Ghi-Han is a slacker who gets off on making lots of phallic jokes and is constantly cracking a big smile. However, Ghi-Han actually has a dark past that he is trying to escape. He was previously a member of Union Five, a legendary gang shrouded in mystery. Ghi-Han refuses to fight, but in a school where gangs are constantly trying to recruit new talent, it doesn’t take long before Ghi-Han has to bare his fists. His incredible power and skill impresses gang leaders, and soon the rumors of Union Five’s great Ghi-Han begin swirling. Soon Poong Rim will be crawling with Union Five members, and it will be up to the Guidance Club to maintain order!

Unlike the more serious yanki title Worst, this story keeps the mood much more light-hearted and easy going in this first volume. The character Ghi-Han has been seen in many stories, the whacky extrovert who uses his smile and happy attitude to mask a darker secret that he hopes doesn’t catch up with him. Not the most original, but it does add a small bit of tension to the story progression knowing that Ghi-Han’s secret past will most definitely become public in a big way. It’s also unclear just how dark his past is at this point, just that there’s something there he wanted to escape and would rather not get involved with. He’s trying to make a new life for himself at Poong Rim, finding something special in the naïve but good-hearted Hyun-ha.

So far I’m not completely sold on this story, but there is a lot of potential for some interesting developments. I especially like this little hierarchy going on between the gangs and the Guidance Club. Most of the club members are a mystery now, but there’s this feeling that some of them are quite powerful and I found myself really wanting to see them in action. This legend of Union Five also adds some nice tension to the storyline. Slowly we find out about some of the members of this elite gang, their plans, and the promise of future conflict. It feels like Poong Rim could become a battleground, and I’m definitely itching to see what goes down.

Comments
Keeping the mood light and comedic, with flashes of darker, more serious tones in the background, Fighting!! Guidance so far presents a decent setup to another entry in the yanki, or high school gang, sub-genre. This is the first Korean manwha that I’ve read that covers this type of story, so it is interesting for myself to see the differences between its Japanese counterparts.

The story tries a bit too hard to be humorous, but by the end of the volume the flow seemed to be finding its groove a bit better as more serious events began to unfold. The fights are okay, but there’s nothing really exciting yet as we are still in the introduction phases. I think if the story begins to focus more on the political hierarchy behind the scenes along the strength and power of the Guidance Club, this could become something quite enjoyable.