Pine Kiss

[cerusee]

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a couple of new manwha titles, Pine Kiss and The Land of Silver Rain, published by Net Comics (a new publisher, I think?). I've been feeling I should try to correct my complete ignorance about Korean comics, and these looked appealing enough. They've been sitting in my giant stack o' manga since then, and I only yesterday got to the first one.

Alas. Pine Kiss is craaaaaaaaaaaap. The translation is almost unreadable. It's at the level of a bad scanlation--one of those translations shooting for as much literalism as possible, with no regards for the sound, feel, or comprehensibility in the new language.

Here's a sample: Sebin, daughter of a powerful gang leader, is being driven to school by one of her father's flunkies.


Flunky: (swearing at an ambulance with its siren on) F#&king hell! Retards...Pulling them babies out at this time in the morning. On this pea sized land, we don't even have enough space to walk around. D%ckheads! F#&ckers!

Sebin: Don't come to work, starting tomorrow.

Flunky: Ha! I'm sorry...this crazy mouth did it again...don't tell boss, I mean, your father! I'll get killed. How dare I say things like "hell" and "f#&k in front of you...Ha! I'm so...sorry! ...but to Boss...no, to your father...

Sebin: Shut your mouth! (thinking to herself) Stinks...a title that reveals his background...it's nauseating!



And it it were a scanlation, I wouldn't complain, whether or not I chose to read it, but it's not. It's a commercial release, and this is not an acceptable level of work for a ten-dollar book. This without a doubt, the worst screw-up I've seen by a publisher in this field, worse than that bizarre, untranslated panel in Tactics, or Tokyopop's hit-or-miss approach to translating sound effects. I would not touch Net Comics with a ten foot pole, after this.

I've never returned a book in my life, but I'm seriously thinking taking these back in and and exchanging them. I don't think I can bring myself to slog through the rest of even Pine Kiss, much less take on Land of Silver Rain, I don't want to keep them, and I can't imagine who could possibly want them.


That said, if anybody on my flist is interested in reading badly translated Korean comics about mafia princesses and Korean fairy tales, drop me a line; they're yours for free.

Comments

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

The Korean Fairy tales sound interesting! Is it by the same author? Did you flip through and see if the translations were as bad as Pinekiss? That is some bad translation though.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Different author, same translator, so I can probably expect the same level of incomprehensibility. Since I haven't even cracked it open and it's in perfect condition, I may well exchange it. There's tons of stuff I'd rather have.

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[octopedingenue]

I have been incredibly unimpressed with the translation and editorial quality of the "professionally" translated manwha I've seen in stores. Last year I picked up a freebie volume from the Ice Kunion publisher (WTF is up with that name?) that had samples from different series in it; they all looked like someone printed out crappy scanlations on cheap paper and stapled them together!

I haven't read very much scanlated manwha, but most of what I have I've liked well enough.

Comic and Comic Lover Dream are both about a girl struggling to become a manwhaga (manwha creator); I've only just started them, but I'm entertained so far.

Demon Diary had very cute characters and lovely shonen-ai art, and the story started out promisingly enough, but it ends in a hastily resolved mess that leaves a lot of subplot points that were built up dramatically dangling into nowhere. It had one (very talented) artist but multiple successive writers, and it shows. If you read it, do so for the demon manservant Eclipse, who is gorgeous and snarky and awesome.

Due to technical difficulties I've only been able to download 1 chapter of I Wish so far, but it reminds me favorably of "Petshop of Horrors" (which I have completely fallen in love with, FYI) and "XXXholic".

And last but certainly not least, my favorite manwha so far by far has been They Too Love. It's a lot like "Kare Kano", with not as polished art but more offbeat. I really hope it gets licensed, since scanlations of it are going so slowly--but a publisher like Tokyopop had better get it over the ridiculously awful English manwha publishers I've seen so far!

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[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I did read Demon Diary--it's one of mikkeneko's favorite series. I always felt a little betrayed by it because the ending didn't match the prologue, but on the whole, it still ranks as the best manwha title I've yet to read, and them's the breaks when you switch writers in the middle of a series.

Remniscient of Petshop of Horrors is reason enough to check something out, in my book. :D I will definitely check out the stuff you linked. I'm still interested in manwha, and free takes away some of the sting of feeling burned by a bad purchase.

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[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Okay, my favorite manwha by far is now also They Too Love. *_*

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[octopedingenue]

IT IS SO AWESOME. I want to have its off-kilter babies. Were you able to snag chapter 8? I have not found it anywhereeee. *pleady eyes*

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[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. And They, Too, Love was the only one I managed to get hold of at all, due to technical difficulties like everything else being IRC only, and me being too shy to approach strangers on the interest and ask them to illegally file-share with me.