Customer Reviews

Model (Model), Vol. 2

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Desperately seeking bishounen? You might want to check out this series! Lee So-Young has crafted a gothic-style vampire series that is likely to appeal to many of the shoujo audience who enjoy a blend of horror and fantasy with plenty of sexy anime guys appearing on the pages. While the story is not particularly new or fresh, the art treatment is excellent and the overall presentation is bound to attract fans of manga who also like such shows as Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and anime like Night Walker.

Ji Ye is an artist studying Europe when the unexpected happens. She winds up with a drunken vampire in her apartment that drinks her blood. Rather than freaking out at this, Ji's dedication to her pursuit of art makes her decide that the beautiful male vampire is her perfect model for a portrait. The two strike a deal. Ji will allow the vampire to have her blood, if he will allow her to paint him. Of course, Ji's in for a dangerous time of it, the vampire's inscrutable motives for allowing her to live and paint him are puzzling. The complicated characters of the vampire, Michael, and his mysterious servants leave a mystery that is too irresistible for Ji Ye to leave alone. Ji is perhaps the most refreshing character in this story, her obsession and fascination with painting tempered by a stubborn curiosity and a refusal to simply give in to the moody and threatening vampire. I enjoyed the overall story, although at times the plot was a bit too predictable or cliché for my liking.

The artwork shows the true strength of Lee So-Young's craft. She creates rich, textured backgrounds that evoke the mood and themes of this story beautifully. Old castle-like mansions, elegant clothing, and atmospheric touches all pay homage to the traditional vampire stories. The two main male characters featured in this first volume are extreme examples of bishounen art. Both extremely effeminate in appearance-too much for my personal taste-they do convey an air of unworldly beauty and alien motivations; separate from the world of Ji Ye and her peers.

Overall, this series will probably fit best with those readers who like paranormal romances, with overly romanticized vampires. There is little violence or nudity to contend with, but the subject matter and relationships are not necessarily appropriate to younger preteen audiences. A good manga with a decent storyline and creative, stylized art work that melds well with its chosen subject. A definite recommend to the shoujo vampire fan!

Happy reading! ^_^ Shanshad

Jea has graduated and moved to Europe to pursue her dream to become an artist. She's been living there for four years and one day her boy-magnet girlfriend Melissa comes knocking at her door with the most beautiful, drunken young man you could ever see begging her to let him stay the night at her house as he has passed out. She gets totally pissed off at her for leaving him there to go see her boyfriend, especially considering she was flirting with him all night beforehand.

She's unable to sleep that night on behalf of there being a complete stranger in her house and then has a dream of him pinning her to the bed and biting into her neck. She wakes to believe it was all a dream and when she steps out of bed to go get a glass of water, already feeling paranoid enough as it is, steps on his arm outstratched from underneath her bed to realize he actually had bitten her, and after stepping on his arm he gets up on her bed and bites her neck again still drunken all this time.

After waking up from having passed out she finds herself inspired and begining to sketch him...until he wakes up and detests it! He blows his top about her having undressed his upper have for the purpose of the sketch. He's mad that a mear mortal dared to touch his body.(*cough Narcissist.*cough, damn those allergies!)

She goes on to tell him that she considered them even for him haven drank her blood, and not having realized he had drank her blood from being intoxicated, he throws up. Although realizing her blood isn't "Tainted", he admits to liking her "Type" of blood and they strike a deal. "Quid Pro Quo", he poses as her model in return for her blood and the story begins.

I'm still reading through this first book of it that I got earlier today, but I find it to have quite beautiful artwork and a very interesting story so far. If you like vampires (*cough He's hot too.*cough) as much as I do, you should definitly buy this first book. If you do I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I borrowed this book from my best friend before she even had the chance to open it. After reading it, all I wanted was to get my hands on the second book as quickly as possible. It gave me manga fever!
The artwork is divine, I throughly enjoyed it. However, I think the author sometimes gets ahead of themself. There are... leaps... in the book, holes. Where two characters will be talking together and then all of a sudden on the next page it will be a completely new character in a new situation. A couple of times I had to re-read the same pages about five times to understand what happened. That's why I took a star off, otherwise I would have given it a full five.
Overall, the characters are likeable and the story is believeable. Sometimes, though, I mistake the woman and the man with one another. Hehe. No, c'mon... he's cute...

Girl meets vampire. Vampire does the ooh-spooky-I'm-too-sexy thing. Girl falls for vampire despite the fact that he's immortal, undead, and a total jerk.

That's the basis for many a rotten supernatural romance, and it doesn't work much better in the tepid first volume of "Model." So-Young Lee brushes this canvas some tense moments and pretty gothic artwork, but the grotesque-looking characters and thoroughly cliched vampire-and-pretty-girl-fall-for-each-other storyline bog it down considerably.

Jae is shocked when her roommate drags in a beautiful, drunk young man, who gets up in the middle of the night and sucks blood from her neck. Three guesses what he is, and the first two don't count.

So as a sort of payback, she decides to draw his picture, only to incur the vampire Michael's wrath because he doesn't want anyone to paint him. But after she impresses him with her feistiness, Jae is given a strange commission -- she will be the first person to ever capture Michael's beauty on canvas, in exchange for regular blood donations. After some initial skirmishes, she moves into Michael's vast gothic mansion to begin work.

But of course, things keep getting weird, especially as Jae tries to keep her independence under Michael's orders, and constantly reminds herself that her host isn't human. Yeah, she thinks he's hot even though he looks girlier than she does. But things get even more complicated when the icy housekeeper's rebellious son, Ken, comes back to the mansion and reveals a long-standing feud between himself and Michael.

Vampire stories in general tend to have lots of cliches, and "Model" has them all -- gothic mansions (where does Michael get this money from anyway?), gorgeous elegant European bloodsuckers, oh-so-feisty young girls, and even a housekeeper who seems like a prettier version of Mrs. Danvers. Add a sulky male teenage rebel-without-a-cause, and you pretty much have an accurate idea of what "Model" is.

Unfortunately this story is not only cliched, but also tedious and slow-moving -- not much of anything happens, except the two main characters intermittently flirt and bicker and tease. Lee succeeds in perking things up slightly with a revelation about Ken and Michael near the end, and there's one mildly amusing scene involving Michael's "dinner hall," but otherwise it's mostly made up of cryptic questions and autumn rambles around the estate.

Even more distracting: the artwork. Korean manwha has a distinct style all its own, but Lee takes it to grotesque dimensions -- teeny heads, enormous hands and feet, incredibly long fingers and nails. And the manga/manwha "androgynous beauty" angle is taken to absurd extremes -- it is often literally impossible to tell the men from the women in this story, which doesn't reaffirm Michael's attractiveness.

In fact, Michael is actually rather creepy and obnoxious -- he talks endlessly about how gorgeous and dangerous he is, when he isn't wandering around in a sheet. And I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by Jae's spunk, but frankly she comes across as rather stupid. There's a fine line between a feisty heroine and a ditz with no self-preservation instincts... and Jae barrels straight over that line.

The first volume of "Model" ends with one intriguing little mystery, but sadly nothing else to really capture your attention. Cliches up the wazoo, and no likable characters to make up for it.

This is a seven-part series from Korea involving a Korean art student named Jae, studying in Europe, who gets attacked by a drunken vampire who has been dumped at her apartment by her floozy girlfriend. When Jae comes to during the day and finds the vampire sleeping under her bed, she instantly renders him "en deshabille" and starts happily sketching him. "Fair is fair", she figures. His anger when he comes to is rather amusing.

Quickly enough our premise is established. Jae is hired to live at Michael the Vampire's Big Old Gloomy Gothic Mansion. She will paint his portrait, and in exchange, he gets to nosh on her on occassions. (He can only drink the blood of the "pure", and I guess they are hard to come by.) It seems for a second that this is about an artist who is passionate about her art to the point of being a bit of a nutcase. At first, Jae is brave, quirky, and wierd enough to make one actually try to overlook the fact that she cannot keep her hair out of her face. But it quickly descends into a seven-volume sleepwalk. Be aware that I consider myself very much fan of the gothic genre, and am a bit of a sucker for "Girl in a Dark House" supernatural thrillers, and I still found everthing past the opening pages to be a waste of time.

Firstly, the art gave me a slight headache. Nobody can keep their hair out of their faces, which is distracting. For seven volumes, all we see is the interior of this one mansion, which has some architectural charms which at first made me go "Oooh" but which got old by Volume 2 already. Jae quickly becomes just another idiot girl mooning over which guy to choose, the vampire or his son. She really has no purpose in the story other to get smooched or slurped on or whatever -- not even to serve as the audience viewpoint, as most of the interesting conversations (there's no ACTION whatsoever) occur when she is not there. She scarcely paints anything either.

The so-called plot involves characters all being really mysterious about their pasts, which they finally talk about in Volume 7. When we do learn stuff, it isn't really in the context of dramatic turning points in the story. It's just like "Oh, that's an interesting fact about your life."

Then you get scenes like this --

CHARACTER A: We must leave this house at once. It is desperately urgently important . . . ummmm . . . because . . . ummm . . . Michael is really annoying me.

CHARACTER B: I'll leave with you next week. Okay.

CHARACTER A: But we desperately MUST leave now, or . . . he might annoy YOU!!!

(A day or so later.)

CHARACTER B: <desperately> You were right. Michael is mildy annoying. We MUST get out of this house RIGHT AWAY.

CHARACTER A: <not so desperately all of a sudden> No. You said next week.

And so on. Since nobody has any consistent motivation or personality, it is impossible to actually care about anybody and pointless to try to figure them out. It is harmless as this sort of thing goes. I was never scared or grossed out. There are one or two nice panels per volume. I got it from the library, and found it a nifty tool to unwind after a hard day when I wasn't up to something as intellectually and emotionally demanding as, say, DNANGEL or BLEACH. Any old pulp novels going by names like THE DITHERING DAMSEL or THE SORDID SECRET or THE BROODING BRUTE or whatever that you can pick up for fifty cents at a used bookstore is likely to be a better read. But don't take my word for it. This obviously DOES please some people. I just can't think why.

"He knows my entire mind. That last thought."

As tension mounts in this fifth volume of seven, Jae considers leaving the house, but she is too drawn to the mystery behind Michael, Ken, and Eva. We see flashbacks of Michael's human life. Jae reaches the point of no return with Michael, but what about Ken and his love for her? We learn yet another secret as to what Eva wants for Michael to give Ken. Preparations for Ken are fast approaching as he deals with his own transformations. The story complicates as Jae realizes who she truly loves. But has she overstayed her welcome?

Well this is probably my favorite entry because something monumental happens between my preferred ship. I also thought it was good to see the a glimpse into Michael's human life as it added another dimension to him. I was a little sad to see Jae sort of resolves that she isn't actually a talented artist, but just relies on her passion to *want* to be good. I feel like she should be better and stronger than that. I do at least like that she is in tune with her feelings. It's just a matter of her suitors deciding what they want.

The story isn't the most original, and the men are drawn so beautifully to the point of where they look like women, at least if they have long hair. The art style isn't really my favorite as the features are a bit disproportionate for my tastes, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the series. Jae's character could be worse. She makes pretty stupid decisions, but I do like that she stands up for herself every so often. And she certainly has her dedication to art. You can't deny that. This being the fifth volume, she is still consistent with goal of obtaining Michael's portrait. I am glad to see an actual deadline.

I purchased the whole series at once on Ebay for about $30. It was an excellent deal and I've gladly kept every one. It is FAR from the best series, but I've certainly read worse.

I love this manga book! It is awesome. It is about a girl named Jae who goes to art school. One night her friend dumps a guy(a very handsome guy) on her couch. That night, with the still passed out stranger on her couch, she has a dream that the stranger bit her. When she wakes up she finds that it wasn't a dream. They make a deal together. In this deal Jae gets to paint a portrait of Micheal, the stranger, and he gets to drink her blood. ( If you haven't figured it out Micheal is a vampire.) Jae goes to live at Micheal's mansion, where she meets Ken and Eva. In this story Jae finds her self caught up in a web of mystery...and attraction.

Ive read every single one of the books over and over and i love each one of them. Excellent art work! If your into vampire romances you need to read this. But be prepared to be addicted. after i got done with one book i had to have the next one. One i got all of them i couldnt stop reading!

I really enjoyed this book! Model Vol. 5 is, without a doubt the best one yet in Lee So-Young's gothic/romantic series. The art is incredible and the detail and effort that the author put into this book is clearly visible. Futhermore, this is a real page turner and you won't know it's the end unitl you run out of pages! I would definately reccomend this book to anyone who love manga!

Jae went to Europe to study. She is your typical struggling art student, trying to find that special SOMETHING to make her great.
One night her friend drops off a drunk stranger into the apartment and everything changes. This stranger is breathtakingly beautiful and is also a vampire. The vampire offers her a deal, her blood for his beauty - he will model for her. Will it help get her career on track or is it just a deal with the Devil? Will she be able to handle him or it is all just a trap?
Great art and wonderful use of silence during much of the manga. The reader is allowed to absorb the story, not having it forced down his or her throat.