PREFACE
As the first
female detective in Korea, Jiran Ha has a lot on her plate. As
a member of the Hard Crimes Unit, Jiran must deal with all sorts of
scum and villainy. She also has to deal with the chauvinist
attitude of her fellow cops, who don't take kindly to a woman being
their superior. The only one that seems to truly understand
her is her partner, Detective Park.
Recently, Jiran's life has taken some very strange turns.
First of all, she has become a target of a stalker with very
powerful connections. Then, an old friend from school asks
Jiran to discover if her husband is cheating on her. Things
get even stranger when her her old boyfriend Myungho Chun is the
prime suspect in a series of murders. Last but not least, she
must find out if Haesung, a boy she used to baby sit, is really
leader of a vicious street gang.
While all this insanity would make weaker men fail, this is all
in a days work for the "Blue Angel"!
MANGA VISION TEST
ARTWORK: Hyun Se Lee's heavy handed artwork
fits the gritty and "hard boiled" tone of the
story. He uses a lot of big black lines and dark shadows for a very pulp fiction feel. There is a lot of
detail during the fight sequences, with plenty of great looking pose
shots. During the quiet times, the artwork is a little on the simple side.
SOUND EFFECTS: The
Korean sound effects are pretty
subdued, even during the high action moments. It blends in a little too
well into the background. Fortunately, the action is so well
drawn, you don't need sound effects to get the point across.
EDITS:
No edits have been noted.
EXTRAS: A letter and a brief history of author Hyun Se Lee is all you
get.
BOOK REPORT
STORY:
A standard exercise in the cop genera, "Blue Angel" is a collection of
loosely linked stories centering around the trials and tribulations of
Detective Jiran Ha. Like "Law and Order" Hyun Se Lee's emphasis
is on the investigation of the crime, rather than the development of
the characters. While Jiran Ha gets some limited back story,
the rest of the cast are typical "background" filler.
TRANSLATION: The translation is
just as hard hitting as the character. Sentence structure is solid, with no tongue twisting
phrases making you go "huh?"
CHARACTERS: Detective Jiran
Ha is the perfect "bad assed chick", unlike the
reserved Jane Tennison from "Prime Suspect". While
both women had to deal with bizarre crimes and sexist attitudes, Ha is more like "Dirty Harriet",
responding to violence with violence. She isn't stupid, just
way too tough for her own good.
Other than her, the entire cast amount to no more than
"special guest stars", memorable, but disposable. Even her regular partner
Detective Park, who is her rock, has very little personality
of his own. His only purpose is to be as tough, and make wise cracks
about Jiran's "balls".
FAN SERVICE: There are several scenes of nudity and panty shots, but
it's really not erotic.
FOOTNOTES:
What do you get when you have
stories with the complexity of a "Prime Suspect" episode, yet the brutality of "Pulp
Fiction"? Well, you have "Hard Boiled Angel", a dark and edgy crime drama that has all the subtlety of Dirty Harry.
"First Story: The Autumn of a Man" starts off as a
typical case of a woman being stalked. Just when you think that he is
going to kill her, things take a 180 as we discover that Detective
Jiran Ha is his intended victim. Things go from bad to worse as the
stalker starts to make Ha's life difficult, as if being disrespected by
her co workers wasn't bad enough. We really see that while Ha is a
woman, she acts more like a man. Naturally, that makes her even
sexier, causing our bad guy to take things up a notch himself. She is
his dream woman, hotter than hell, and
a total bad ass.
The next story is "Target", a typical "cheating
spouse" tale with a twist ending. "What is the
twist?" you may ask. Well, you have to read to find out.
"Ah Voh Puc" (Story 3) reminds
me of an old Magnum P.I. episode when an old friend of Magnum's drops in for a visit,
and reveals that an ancient voodoo god is after him. In this
case, the "friend" is Ha's old lover Myungho Chun, and for this
story, it's a
Mayan god called "Ah Voh Puc" that's after him. Truth be
told, the Mayan god is after a lot
of people. In a sort of bizarre chain letter, Chun has brought the
curse of "Ah Voh Puc" with him, and now everyone is killing in
the name of this strange deity. With Ha having to investigate her ex
lover and his wife, this is not
going to end well.
"Les Enfant Terribles" plays out like an After School
Special, only with guns and sex. Jiran Ha encounters Haesung, a
young kid she used to baby sit five years ago, now living on the wrong side of the
law. Apparently, he is the leader of a rather violent gang of thugs,
who are getting ready to start a turf war. Jiran is convinced that
Haesung isn't a bad kid at all, and sets out to find the truth.
Hyun Se Lee does
a better job at writing than he did with his "Akira"
knockoff "Nambul: War Stories". While it is a
mixture basic cop stories, Lee does take the standard plots and give
things a little twist. While he isn't a brilliant storyteller,
he does make "Hard Boiled Angel" live up to it's name,
with enough sex and violence to make Sam Spade proud.
"Hard Boiled Angel" is one of those titles that people
are going to either love it or hate it. On the negative side,
the writing isn't very original, the characters are your basic
stereotypes, and the artwork is not very detailed. On the
other hand, it has plenty of hard hitting action, interesting plot
twists, and a very "film noir" quality about it. The
choice is yours.
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