Oath to Love and Passion 1

Why am I doing this to myself?  Why do I buy volume 1 of an incomplete series that I know I’m going to like?

This one was an easy choice:  It had the cutesy title with two sweet-looking girls on the cover, and the tagline on the back of the book was “Love is blind… it’s also bloodthirty and has one hell of a sense of humor.”  It goes on to describe one of the girls on the front as a “manipulative harpy”, and then kind of insults all the other characters.  It was honestly the most compelling summary I’ve ever read.

The plot is pretty standard girls’ stuff.  Jung Yul (Passion) and Sa Rang (Love) are twins with opposite personalities.  Jung Yul is a good, mild-mannered girl, whereas Sa Rang is a horrible person that comedically manipulates people to get what she wants.  It happens that Jung Yul is in love with Yoo Shin, a boy in her class, and Yoo Shin’s best friend, Nan Soo, is head-over-heels for Jung Yul.  After working up the courage to confess to her, Nan Soo is actually rejected… by Sa Rang, who he mistakes for Jung Yul, and then again that same morning by Jung Yul.  Nan Soo isn’t one to give up though, and is determined to get Jung Yul to give him a chance.  Sa Rang, meanwhile, has quite a lot of fun torturing and manipulating Yoo Shin, so now there’s a possibility that Sa Rang likes Yoo Shin, and Yoo Shin likes Sa Rang.

It’s very, very funny, mostly due to the efforts of Sa Rang and Nan Soo.  So Rang is kind of annoying until she gets her chance to shine in a scene with Yoo Shin.  She manages to get him to take a caning (?!) for her at school, and then proceeds to torment him while getting him to buy her dinner, give her his jacket, and then see her home.  I wanted to hate her, but it’s hard not to smile at the lines she uses to get people to do things for her.  Of course, you are kind of wondering why it is people are submitting to her, because she’s not that clever, but that’s just part of the story.

Nan Soo, in addition to being fairly amusing, also gets a lot of sympathy since he seems to be pretty serious about Jung Yul.  He doesn’t give up after being rejected, and actually puts a lot of effort into trying to get himself a second chance.

Also, the best part of the book was probably that Nan Soo’s father was drawn as a gigantic bear, for no real reason.  There are a couple lenghty scenes between Nan Soo and his father.  There is one frame where he’s drawn like a real person, but other than that… yeah, the man’s a bear.  I love it.

This is another one of those CPM books I got cheaply (and is still on sale until May 4th), and I couldn’t have been happier with the impulse buy.  Like I said, the worst part of it is that there’s no volume two, but it’s still worth a read.  Also worth noting, this is another one of those series that ran in Wink magazine, which really is the home to all sorts of the best girls’ comics.