Review: Bird Kiss

Bird Kiss
By Eun Ah Park
Romance/Comedy
Rated T, age 13+
Tokyopop, $9.99

Bird Kiss is a classic shoujo story with a bit more depth to the characters than usual.

Park sets the stage right up front with a super-cute retelling of the Frog Prince fairy tale before starting the schoolgirl tale that is the heart of the story. Miyoul, the heroine, is a middle school student who is infatuated with high school student Guelin and goes to all sorts of crazy lengths to get him to notice her. Tripping her up every step of the way is the geeky Heerack, who has had a crush on Miyoul forever and waits on her hand and foot, waking her up every morning for school and bringing her special lunches. Because he cluelessly follows her everywhere, he ends up getting in the way whenever she gets close to making points with Guelin.

While some of the plot points are telegraphed with screaming semaphores a mile away—is it a spoiler to reveal that Heerack is pretty good looking once he gets contacts and a decent haircut?—some of the relationships, like the class alpha-girl’s feelings for Heerack, are more complicated. Also interesting is the fact that the point-of-view character is not so perfect; Miyoul is really mean to Heerack and feels persecuted when her friends take his side. Even though her friends are right, it’s easy to be sympathetic to her confusion and resentment. If Park allows Miyoul to really develop, this could be an interesting series.

The art is very stylized. The faces have a very hard look, with big, round black eyes and dark lips, which seems to be common in manwha. Park goes a little crazy with the flower backgrounds, but I happen to like that. Sound effects are untranslated, which is distracting; I’d prefer to see small translations either alongside the characters or in the back.

With this volume the series is off to a promising start, and I’ll be interested to see how much complexity Park brings to the characters in future volumes.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.)