As I continue to plow through my TBR pile uncovered while cleaning, I finally came across two manga in a row! I even have number 1.
Will miracles never cease?
Thus, continuing the China theme, Qwan is a supernatural manga set during the fall of the Han Dynasty, apparently drawing heavily on The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (something, like Journey to the West, that I feel like I should really know more about than I do.)
I have mixed feelings about this one, if I’m honest.
SPOILERS
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I really want to like Qwan, both as a manga and a character. First of all, the character is right up my alley–he’s a fully supernatural being, having fallen directly from heaven in the opening panels, who eats demons. He’s kind of naïve in an adorable way and instantly falls in with a delinquent type named Chikai. Chikai is everything I want in my fictional men.
Which is to say, Chikai is kind of a moron, definitely up to no good, and fully in it for the money. Not worth the space he occupies. Literally, immediately the person I most identify with.
After Chikai nearly get strung up for eating the offerings left at the shrine of the local god, Qwan and he start making a living as wandering exorcists. Chikai does the talking and Qwan does the demon eating. Things go along like this for awhile until they run afoul of a magical girl who can control insects, Daki.
Daki comes with a lot of complication, including a snake-demon mother and a sociopathic spider-demon father. She’s a good kid, though? Like, part of her whole schtick is that she’s a very dutiful daughter, except her parents fully suck (at least dad, mom is actually very loving despite being a snake.) She is also critical to the plot. It turns out that her spidery-father is trying to get his hands on a macguffin, the Scroll of Essential Arts of Peace, which is also critical to unraveling–or perhaps, tying back together–the secret of Qwan’s existence and purpose. So, for a good part of volumes one and two, Qwan and Daki do a dance around each other that culminates in sneaking into the Imperial Palace to steal the scroll. Unbeknownst to either Qwan or Daki, an imperial scholar, Jou Kai (courtesy name Kuko) has already secreted it away, having predicted through the stars that the heavenly mandate for the Han Empire has already faded.
I really liked this particular plot.
I was very into all the political twists and turns, in particular when in volume two the grandson of Eunuch Cao Jie, Aman (courtesy name Sousou or Cao Cao) shows up.
In fact, I was strongly enough invested in this storyline that I was like, okay, looks like the scanlations continue elsewhere, I will read on to see what happens next.
What happens next is… really f*cking weird.
All of a sudden, the story takes a full left turn into a fantasy land. The politics are forgotten and we spend a lot of time in a place called The Golden Turtle Island. As the chapter title says: “Wherein Qwan, Shaga, and Teikou are spirited away.”
And… precisely where I lost interest.
I skimmed a bunch of pages waiting to see if this was a very short interlude to heal Qwan, who had suffered a lot of injuries in the previous battles, but it seems to go on and on. Summaries of the rest tell me that when we do finally return to the plot and the people I like, seventeen years have passed.
So, I am left with very mixed feelings. I was super into this for the first two volumes. It’s possible that if I can figure out where the story returns to the people and the world I love, I might enjoy the ending? I want to like this, but I have zero interest in the events on Golden Turtle Island. If other people reading this review have finished this series, please advise!
This is always a problem when reading anything that has multiple characters. As an author myself, I try to be cognizant of the fact that sometimes people only tolerate the main character because they love the people that they’ve attracted into their Scooby Gang. I’d been feeling pretty confident while reading Qwan, because I liked more that one of Qwan’s friend group. I was into Chakai, Aman, and the imperial scholar guy Jou Kai. I figured that with this many side character that I liked, I wouldn’t hit that point where if someone I like dies or leaves the story I just sort of limp towards the ending joylessly (or quit entirely.) But, then they literally a disappeared in a puff of smoke and I was left with Qwan, who I liked okay, but is literally a supernatural being and, thus, isn’t exactly RELATABLE, his weird mom-like prostitute goddess friend, Shaga, and the manga’s mascot demon, Teikou.
…
Because this whole story is available online, I have a lot less hesitation recommending it to you. If this sounds at all interesting or if you just want to see how WRONG I am about all of this, go for it.
The art will not disappoint.
In fact, I liked Shimizu-sensei’s art so much that I’m thinking about tracking down some of her other work to see if there’s something there I might enjoy even more than I did the first two volumes of this.
Will I keep it? I mean, by chance, the stuff I like best takes place in the volumes I bought, so… maybe? Yes?
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