Skip to main content

Featured Post

Conversation starter?

Questions are good things. They are there to get to know others and to find the common ground with each other, with the people we want to love. Well, I would think that the biggest thing I need to learn is to love myself. I think at least. I like lists, I make lists, mainly about anime and manga that I want to read and watch. And sometimes about American books too. My life does revolve around things that I consume. And I do not know if I am fine with that. I would like to fancy myself that I like philosophy, but in truth, I like the idea of philosophy. In the sense, philosophy means the love of knowledge, because we cannot know everything. So we need to start with things that we do not know, even though there are many famous figures in philosophy, I do not want to read from them. Because the biggest thing that I do not know if myself. And, as I am right now, I am more interested in filling the emptiness in me, if that makes sense. But I like questions. So, I went out and looked for que...

Lock You Up - [Chapter review][1-9] "A real slow burn"

"Ordinary high school student Lu Qing Yu and the elegant university teaching assistant, Cheng Jing. Their encounters were definitely not by chance or just a coincidence. Due to their previous generation's old grudges and grievances had made them unable to live tranquility and peacefully. He, who took great pains and had ransacked his brain over trying to make the star fall from the sky, but was enthralled and mesmerized by the star instead; The other him who was ignorant, trusted him wholeheartedly and faithfully, staying completely oblivious to the fact that this was all just a trap meticulously and carefully designed especially for him..." - mangaupdates.com

This manhua is still currently being translated, so I thought about doing some chapter reviews as I catch up with it. As I experienced it, it is a fast read and the plot doesn't pull any punches. Originally it is already completed with 93 chapters. The creators to Lock You Up are 2y and Wei Lan Shen Ye, who are both marked as the artists and authors. It was originally published AC.QQ or on other names Tencent Manhua in 2000. So this is quite an old one.

The art looks fine, even though the backgrounds are flat, but that is something that I came to expect from manhua's by this point so it doesn't bother me that much. The characters are sometimes strange, looks strange and off. The main drawing point is the drama and the first 2 chapters sell it well and it builds tension.

Score: 4/10

It is a really slow read, I can say that it is interesting, but the story just doesn't want to start and the tension after the first chapters starts to leave us. The pacing is certainly strange in this one. I can't really recommend it.

Note: I do not know if this will turn into +18 plus, due to nudity or sexual themes, there are some sex scenes and naked men from the waist up, however, there are things like that in a PG13 movie, so these things are not that wild. I will mark it if something changes through.


Chapter 1 + 2 + 3: The first chapters go along with the description and the tension can be felt. The characters are well defined, the tutor Cheng Jing is charming when he needs to and menacing when he needs to. There is a hint that Cheng Jing and Lu Qing Yu are half brothers, and he is doing this because their father had left his mother and him for someone else. It is an interesting plot. It promises an intense revenge drama, where they will take revenge on an innocent so it hopefully is an interesting read.

Lu Qing Yu is neglected by his father, so it is hard to see this when you know that he will be getting the short end of the stick. The chapters themselves are short and interesting, giving you enough information but still let you hanging. This could be a little bit disadvantageous, but it works when you bing read it.

Oh, and there is a woman, Huo Cheng Yu who is already taking Qing Yu's father to bed, and she is working with Jing already. (I have no idea how to refer to these people.)

Chapter 4 + 5: The other person who knows about this revenge plot is Jing's uncle who is right now on stand by. Jing is still having nightmares about what happened with his mother since her death he can't rest and, interestingly, we are starting to make Jing sympathetic even though he is the antagonist of the manhua, but it makes sense since we are seeing the story from his perspective. I don't really know how to feel about him right now.

Jing keeps his promise and goes to the parent-teacher conference and afterward, he flirts with Qing Yu. I think slowly wooing the target is not really in the plan, just something that he does spontaneously. It could be that this will be a situation where the captor slowly falls in love with the captured person. I am still going by the idea that they will capture him and that's that.

Chapter 6: "Bloody hell! I wall slammed teacher!" (≧∇≦)ノ~ this made me crack up! What?! It is not appropriate. This chapter is weird, that's that, only weird. It is here to get the two of them to get more together but Jing is cracking up under pressure. I don't know what's happening but, interestingly, he is getting too close to him even now. So I already have a strange feeling about how this supposed kidnapping will go down.

Note: We finally get a relationship chart and I can't say that I am not intimidated by it, however, there is a tip bit on it. That Qing Yu's father is not Jing's father. They are not related. Qing's father had left his mother for an affair with Qing Yu's mother. Okay...

※ Chapter 7 + 8 + 9: We get new information about Qing Yu's mother committing suicide. Right now we can't do anything with this information, it is more like something that ties the two characters together, both having lost their mothers. So there is a lot of mirroring going on. I don't know what to do with the uncle's character, and no it is questioned what kind of role he is playing in this and how much does he know. But he is a good guy if he wants to talk Jing down from this so it could be that he knows nothing about them wanting to kidnap Qing Yu.

I am already disappointed in how long does it take for the plan to go into motion, this wouldn't be a problem but we do not get any information about what they are actually doing. We are just seeing Jing undermining his plan before it goes in motion with getting too attached to Qing Yu and a lot of other information that is not really needed.

However, with the additional information, I kind of place together with the theme of the manhua. This is more about the generations and how hatred is inherited. The hatred Jing has was pushed onto him by his mother before she died, so now he can't do anything but to live by it. The uncle tries to warn him about it and I do wonder how long this theme will keep up or if I am right.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Domino Smash [app game review] (*  ̄︿ ̄)~Meh...

Rating:  ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ This game was meant to be relaxing, but it ends up boring me in a sense. There is no problem with the advertisement, I, however, felt other parts of the game implemented in really gimmicky and only being in the game because other games have it as well. Like collecting keys and getting to unlock new skins. There is no such need in this kind of game, or if it is, then it was implemented badly. You make one move per game, starting the ball, there is no other interaction and I am fine with that, that's what I had come for. It is nice to see bonus content, but it doesn't work here, sadly. It was made by Gismart. To be fair, I only had played it up until level 25. I can't recommend this app to others.

"0" Review

Long story short: 5/10 pretty decent and middle of the road. Music videos come in many forms and shapes  and form and animation is one of them. In my opinion, a disappointing animation is worse than a disappointing live-action; even though the focal point of a music video is on the music .  The most important thing is clearly the music, the animation here is a kind of bonus experience. I say this because this music video is hard to find on the internet, so I couldn’t re-watch it. (I decided to include "0" because this was between the first short anime music videos that I had watched when I started to watch anime more regularly. And I couldn't leave it without a word.)  Because, if this I based my writing on memory alone, and the recounting of other people writing about this animation. H owever, understanding the things  that go into making a music video is important . While you can judge the animation on of itself, it is needed to be understood that many things go in...

The Eyes of Sora - Chapter review [1-6]

The Eyes of Sora or Sora's Eyes is a manhwa made by Summer and was published on Lezhin in 2015. In its original language, it already concluded, but it is currently being translated. The premiss of the manhwa is interesting: "When Jeongha, the temperamental young son of a wealthy businessman was suddenly stricken down with a mysterious illness, his father scrambled to look for a cure. But the debilitating affliction persisted. Desperate and out of option, the father sought out help from a temple up on a misty mountain to save the life of his only son." - mangaupdates.com The art style is really interesting, it has this sketchy style that looks almost half-finished but it makes it looks easy and light. It brings a nice atmosphere to the entire piece. It looks something really promising. I will be reviewing it chapter by chapter since it is still being translated to English, but if you understand Korean, then you should check Summer out on Lezhin. Chapter 1: And the first c...