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Reviewed by Charles Webb How's this for high-concept: Laon is a 998-year-old fox god whose tails are taken away, leaving her banished to Earth in the form of an androgynous 9-year-old. While searching for her tails she crashes into the life of slacker tabloid journalist, Tae-Ha, who'd rather do anything else than be involved with a violent and sexually aggressive moppet. Together, they investigate gruesome supernatural mysteries tied to the disappearance of Laon's tails. By the end of this volume there was a supernatural rape, a pile of dead bodies, and one confused reporter just looking to get his life back. From the above description the tone could have easily fallen into either pitch-black horror or broad farce - the writer, YoungBin Kim, has opted for the latter. Skewing towards older teens, the story - drawn by Hyun You - is often drenched in blood and black comedy with a little time out taken to reflect on just how bad things have gotten for poor Tae-Ha. The tragedy of his life (for him, at least) is that he wants to pursue "serious" journalism but his life has been hijacked by one of the trashy stories his paper regularly publishes. This volume focuses on Tae-Ha's investigation of a cult-like group, the Secret Path to the Heavens, which intersects with the crimes of a serial rapist who in turn may have a connection to Tae-Ha's new houseguest. This last part was actually a little unclear to me - there's a standard "mysterious man" who makes his introduction to Laon early in the story but either I couldn't quite follow what his connection was to her or it wasn't really elaborated very well in the story. Either way, Tae-Ha and Laon are stuck in the thick of it and it gets nasty pretty quickly. A review of Laon by necessity (I think) has to touch on the most pronounced element of the book, that being the sexuality and sexualizing of its title character. As written by YoungBin Kim, Laon looks at acts like a child. She's petulant, impetuous (to be honest, a little obnoxious) and clearly to be taken as someone who's mentally immature. The weird angle on the book is her sexual passive-aggressiveness towards Tae-Ha and the clearly mutual curiosity on the part of the male lead. Things are made more complex by the question of whether Laon is male or female (it positively has Tae-Ha flustered at one point). Kim writes actually a fairly interesting idea about the nature of balance of why Laon's gender is so fluid throughout the story but it's hard to take those elements seriously or with any level of comfort given the age issue. It would be simply an eccentricity of the plot and nothing to go on about if a plot element of this volume involves a toddler being aged rapidly to a busty adult woman (with the mind of a child). This gives the book's sexual politics a decidedly uncomfortable dimension. What's Kim saying with these sexualized kids? Was it even on purpose and if not doesn't that make it even weirder? The kind of book being written here and the kind of story being told aren't really sophisticated enough to answer those questions. Still, Laon tells an interesting story at a brisk enough pace that it almost overshadows the more poorly-developed sexual elements. A copy of this book was provided by the publisher, Yen Press. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line!
Charles Webb
Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com
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5 July 2010
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