Books: Bride of the Water God #1

Bride of the Water God is the first sunjeong, or shojo-style comic from Korea, that I’ve read so far. What surprises me is not how different it is, but how familiar: if you’ve already had some exposure to the tropes and eccentricities of shojo comics, you won’t find this difficult to get into at all. In fact, if it weren’t for the names and some of the internal references, there would scarcely be any way to know this was a Korean production.

I shouldn’t make those things sound like a criticism, though. Country of origin aside, Water God is light romance first and foremost, with some excursions into the godly and the supernatural. Sadly, it doesn’t have anywhere near the narrative confidence of something like Real / Fake Princess — it has the same diffuse storytelling I've seen in other shojo titles, and when you get down to it there’s really not a lot going on. It looks good, but I’m hoping it eventually evolves past just being a fashion plate and becomes something more memorable.

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