Recently unfinished

[halfcactus]

Chaiko Tsai, "The Monkey King": This seems like a very straightforward adaptation of Journey to the West, which is ideal for me, a person who has no patience to read the book or watch any of the TV adaptations. Unfortunately graphic novels are very difficult for me to read digitally as they're not formatted for screen, so I haven't picked it up since I put it down.

你的工作&你的休假 Your Work & Your Day Off by 日輪 (nichirinko/rilun) (ongoing): This comic is now being serialized on Creative Comic TW and its setup is quite different from the stuff I've seen from the artist's Twitter, maybe because it's a more "proper" webtoon format. Only three chapters are up so far. It was nice reading in traditional Chinese + Taiwanese Mandarin in short spurts, and good practice for reading without a pop-up dictionary.

PLOT: After a series of crushing rejections, a fresh college grad finally lands a job! Here he meets Work, who appears to have a hostile relationship with his roommate, Day Off. Thus begins Work and Day Off's battle of dominance over a hapless office worker...

灯神 The Djinn by 深海巨狗: I don't remember where I saw this recced (I've had it earmarked for a while and forgot why) but I definitely plan on continuing it. It's a short manhua set in ancient Rome. The main character finds a lamp, and in the lamp a djinn. When the main character makes a wish to become a hero, both he and the djinn get to figure out what that means.

The art and paneling are gorgeous, the themes more thoughtful than I expected and potentially knife-y, and the relationship is explicitly gay. I was reading the fantranslation on Mangadex and stopped because I got distracted trying to find the raws, oops.

The Double: Cdrama about a woman who sets out to avenge herself and the woman whose identity she is assuming. In theory: relevant to my interests! In practice, it was pretty slow and bland and only started picking up at around ep 10 (archery competition) and ep 11 (musical showdown)—I'm a fan of OTT competition tropes and especially of visual depictions of music, so it was worth watching to those points! I stopped at around ep 18-19, where I got kind of bored.

I have to say that one very effective thing that this drama does is to introduce a cool new female character every few episodes, thus baiting me into watching more when I would otherwise stop. But the only character who ended up truly feeling interesting to me was the FL's husband, a righteous scholar who, having inadvertently caught the eye of a ruthless princess, frames the FL for adultery and then buries her alive. As the plot progresses, he reveals himself to be a person who cares about doing good while being wracked with guilt and the desire to be punished for his sins. The FL uses his own "goodness" against him to advance her own revenge plans, which makes for a surprisingly intriguing dynamic!

Comments

[halfcactus]

Yeah, my dilemma is that I usually prefer to read graphic novels physically but I don't like things that take up physical space haha. I guess this one being a direct adaptation of a ~classic~ makes it more worthwhile... I hope you enjoyed it!