Bird Kiss 5

I’ve been starting so many series lately, maybe it’s time to go ahead and finish one.  I’ll stand behind what I said last volume about this being a highly enjoyable contemporary shoujo romance.   I really liked the rather traditional, but satisfying, wrapup and conclusion in this volume.

Miyoul continues to be intolerably selfish, but you’re eventually made to see her through Heerack’s eyes in this volume.  He knows she’s totally transparent, and that seems to be one of the reasons he’s genuinely drawn to her.  The challenge in this volume lies with Miyoul trying to convince Heerack that she likes him not because he’s president of the slipper club, but because she finally realized what he meant to her.

Four characters get a lot of development in their relationships in this volume, too.  Actually, nearly everyone gets paired off at the end and finds true love, but four characters in particular get a lot of development and matched off.  Rosa is finally happy.

Lots of happy fun stuff goes down, and I wound up liking this series quite a bit.

Bird Kiss 4

This series got really awesome without my noticing it.  I think this is largely because my biggest problem was (and still is) Miyoul.  But she’s designed to have you hate her, I think.  She’s just such an awful person, and the series is much better off because of her.  As much as I hate her, you also can’t help cheering for her and Heerack throughout this volume as shoujo manga-style traps get in the way of their relationship.

Now that I’ve come around, I think this series is pretty good.  The fairy tale references are pretty obscure, but with one volume left, it really is just a really snappy contemporary shoujo romance.  There’s a limited cast of characters, which is great for a five-volume series like this.  We get one character introduced, but she’s possibly just there to resolve some of the conflicts with Guelin and Heerack’s brother.   The characters are really well-developed and work extremely nicely together for just reaching the third volume, too.  This volume is great because a variety of things happen to Heerack that are just out-of-character for him, and it really is heartbreaking to see how events unfold around him.  The end is good, because you finally get to see Guelin get his comeuppance.  That was nice.

Read it, if only to see the most despicable manga heroine in the history of… manhwa.

Bird Kiss 3

So I think I’ve finally warmed up to this one. Things are finally starting to come back around and sort of slam Miyoul, which is good to see because she’s earned plenty of bad karma. But somehow, this series made me feel bad for her by the end of the volume and now I really, really want to see her hook up with Heerack, even though this is not even what Heerack wants anymore.

With the exception of Heerack, almost all the characters in this series are pretty dispicable and unlikable. This gives it a certain charm, but I think that’s why it took me so long to get into it, because you can’t really latch onto anyone… including Heerack, who’s a total tool, but the only nice guy.

Plot? Yeah, yeah, yeah… Miyoul wants to go out with superhot guy, but superhot guy only goes out on one date with her to try to get Heerack into super-elite club, Heerack realizes Miyoul is only using him and his little heart breaks, super-mean girl starts latching onto Heerack and winds up on top at the end of the volume… all the drama and plot you’ve come to expect from a shoujo series, but this one has a grasp on it similar to, say, Peach Girl or Hot Gimmick. You won’t get into it as much, but it’s still pretty good and worth checking out if you’re into shoujo. I don’t think this series is terribly long (unless it’s still running), and my good vibes can be shattered by a terrible ending. But it is a really cute, really contemporary shoujo story. Go for it!

Bird Kiss 2

I’m still really conflicted about this series.  I like the basic plot, and I like most of the characters, I like the setup, and I like where it seems to be going… but Miyoul is still really, really annoying, and it’s still a bit messy even in volume two as far as plot and direction goes.

The problem with Miyoul is a big one.  See, I thought that the plot of the series was going to be that Heerack got really popular and Miyoul would nice up and go after him and there would be love triangle-y stuff.  That does not seem to be the case as of this volume.  As far as I could tell, Miyoul didn’t nice up after she saw Heerack’s transformation and didn’t apologize to him for their fight… I thought they were still separated, but Heerack still follows her around, and Miyoul still treats him badly.  Miyoul really needs to get her comeuppance, and it will be truly great when that happens.  Other characters are sort of setting her up now, and perhaps even Heerack will pull out at the end of this volume.

She’s getting (or is going to get) some abuse and mistreatment from the guy she’s got a crush on.  Turnabout is fair play, so here’s hoping it’ll happen so we can see how she takes it.

The fairy tale connection is still sketchy and… not really the plot of the series.   This keeps being alluded to throughout the second volume, though, even though there’s not really any parallels to make anymore.  My confusion comes from the fact that everything was set up in the last volume for Heerack to get hot and join the slipper club and have Miyoul pine after him… but none of that happened, and this was basically a rehash of the first volume as I described earlier.

If the plot moves after this, then I think this could turn out to be a fairly decent shoujo series.  I still really like it.  It’s got a really contemporary quality to it, and the art is quite unique, though I don’t really like the alien-ish heads.  I think this is still running in Korea too, so unfortunately after the third or fourth volume, the releases for this series will slow to a crawl too.  Ugh.

Bird Kiss 1

I got pulled in on this one by a promise that it was a modern-day telling of the Frog Prince fairytale. I love retellings of fairy tales. This, unfortunately, is not. It is a high school romance.

It certainly TRIES to be a retelling of the Frog Prince. It brings up the Frog Prince all the time. But it parallels the story with elements in every single high school romance on the face of the goddamn earth. The princess? A junior high school girl with the hots for a very pretty high school guy, her prince. Her frog, the one that waits on her hand and foot, is the geeky guy who’s been friends with her his entire life. Of course, he isn’t the geeky guy anymore at the end of the story, and she begins to get her comeuppance at the end of the volume for being the bratty, shallow princess… but it’s like the mangaka read Ai Morinaga’s Duck Prince and wondered how she could do her own version. They’re not very close story-wise, and they take different approaches, but they have a lot in common.

I did like it a lot, though. As a high school romance, it’s pretty mediocre, but it’s got really pretty art. The main character is a bratty bitch that I can’t stand, but I love seeing these situations she gets herself into and how her own bad actions circling around after her. She’s Sae from Peach Girl, basically. Actually, I like a lot of the characters so far. Despite the fact it’s not quite the fairy tale I hoped for, and it’s not quite the shoujo crack I should really be limiting myself to after reading so many high school romances, I’m actually quite looking forward to the next volume.