And thus ends another mass produced manhwa(if u can call it that) that Yu-Rang churned out. My best suggestion is that she will stop and think carefully of decent plots and characters before she acts on impulse and draws up another disaster. Yes, I said disaster. She has a habit of thinking up seemingly excellent plots but mucks them up until they are as murky as my mother's gumbo. Seeing as this is her 60+ manhwa I would expect some massive drawing change. I'm not saying her style is bad because I respect every mangaka's artistic style but when the style totally impedes one to draw up emotions in the readers and instead makes one reach the point of tearing off hairs or guffawing, you know lines have been drawn. Having said that, this, like ALL her works, suffers from the "everyone looks the same except hair" syndrome. Even when angst moments occur, the badly drawn facial expressions (same barbie doll eyes) just can't make me empathize these characters.

Some manhwa have terrible drawings but make up for good plots but this also have fatal flaws. Like many people that commented before me, disasters and disasters come consecutively after the other like a bad soap opera and all Hyun-bin goes is go"hyung hyung hyung". Shojo is a sensitive genre because I understand teen's romanticized notion of love, bf, etc but I have to wonder what is to be gained from reading works where these teens don't approach sensible adults for help, scheme scheme scheme, beat each other up to settle matters, and liking characters just because they are, I quote from many fans, "he is just so HOT!!!!!!!"

GOOD! no, GREAT! AMAZING!
This is the whole reason I took the time out to make an account here... Why all these bad reviews about Love in the Mask?? O_O

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT ITS REALLY LIKE (i'll try not to be too biased....)

First, I love how it's different from other Shoujo, where the girl only has half a brain and as soon as she falls in love decides to dump everything and act like a reatard. Hyun-bin is the strong kind of girl I like, she does get softer over time though. recently I was kind of shocked like,, "IS THAT REALLY HYUN-BIN??" But its just one of the ups and downs of her life.
She gets stronger, then gets to a weak point, but remains her dignity, I like that. (then strong again and continues like that)

Most of the characters are really good, and make sense, and I like the art for the most part, I've seen way worst.

Plus the fight seens are pretty good for a manhwa (when comparing them to a manga that focusing on fight you kind of are taken aback, but, you get used to it)

AND NOW I WANNA TALK ABOUT THE EMOTIONS!!!! X3

Okay, in this manhwa as youre reading you can really connect to the characters, and get a feel for what there like, which you really never get too much character development in mangas usually. So I like how EVERY character gets a background in this.

Now the bad news....
It's good, but you will hate some characters right off the bat, like.. You're just WAITING for there downfall the whole time! DX And um... Sometimes.. They use the same lines too much, you get that its hard for them to get over, so you pity the characters but still. And the only other bad thing I can think of was



Yup.. SO yeah... It's a really good story that draws you in!! And pull you to the end of your seat wondering whats gonna happen next, a few flaws, but all manhwa have them.. (it kinda slow sometimes but) All and all...

IF YOU DONT READ IT YOU WILL REGRET IT!!! (honestly, I should have said more good things, but there are so many I woudl have ran out of room)

Starts with some pretty good ideas. A tragic childhood, a strong but powerless character, hiding ones true nature, gangsters, blood-feuds, etc. The beginning really hooks you and and at first its a bit addicting. Hyun-bin, the main lead is an interesting and sympathetic character, placed in very difficult and challenging situations.

However, all this good stuff gets killed midway thru with over the top melodrama. It just becomes too much with the main leads pining after one another page after page. The author needed to show a little restraint and unfortunately didn't.

Another thing is that this is really a Yaoi/Boys Love manga masquerading as a gender-bender. Notice that we almost never see Hyun-bin dressed as a female. In 100 chapters we only see her briefly feminine in looks and action. She is mainly limited to being feminine with her emotions and often its in her head not on display as much as other girls in the series. Basically 99% of the time Hyun-bin looks and acts like a slightly effeminate guy, who is desired by a whole menagerie of pretty boys. This is pretty smart by the author (intentional or not) as it ropes in different audiences from those who like their syrupy romances, those who like gender-benders, those who like boys love, etc. However its not sustainable, as this has gone on for a very long time and starts to become unrealistic. There are a few times when Hyun-bin could reveal that she is a girl to those important to her and where its kind of obvious that she is a girl, but no one of course recognizes it. If the author where to fully reveal it then it wouldn't be pseudo-boys love anymore. All of this becomes annoying, distracting and too unrealistic.

The final thing is the art which I overlooked at first because the story started off pretty well. As others have mentioned it suffers from the "everyone looks the same except for the hair" syndrome. Yea, and old guys are characters with young faces but have mustaches or beards, which is supposed to make them look old. It gets worse, as there is supposed to be a fair amount of action with rival gangs fighting one another all the time. However, the artist cannot draw a fight scene to save their lives. Its pretty awful, almost comical in how bad the fight scenes are drawn. Most artists get better as the series goes on and they get experience, but I have only been able to detect the most minimal of improvements here.

This series for all its good points has some serious flaws that make it hard to recommend. It is now heading into the final volumes, I doubt that the art will improve which is a shame cause it would remove a serious stumbling block. However, how the author wraps everything up story wise will determine my final score at the end. For now its a 7 maybe if it finishes well it will move up to 7.5, a 10 it is not no matter how good the ending and a 1 or 2 is too unfair imho.

****************
Update: After reading another 15-20 chpts, the story and art actually got worse! Words cannot express how frustrating this series has become. Its kinda hard to drop after putting so much time into it, but its really difficult to keep reading too. The few good ideas it had early on are no longer enough to save it from the garbage it has turned into. So, now I'm dropping it to a 5 and I'm in doubt if I'm going to continue.

... Last updated on October 13th, 2011, 9:47am

Marfan's Syndrome is an inherited medical condition in which people are extremely tall and have extremely long, skinny limbs. Every time I read one of these Shoujo-Manwha stories, in which the people are ridiculously tall and skinny with the GREAT BIG EYES and the Maybellene Plus eyelashes (boys as well as girls) and hair that has not been brushed since the day they were born, I have to ask myself....

Are we seriously supposed to worry about their love life? Shouldn't we be organizing care packages to get them food and personal grooming equipment ?

Stylized characterizations are ok to a certain point, but when everyone has the exact same face and the only way you can tell it is an old man is because there is a moustache stuck on below those great big Full Lash Mascara eyes, the story loses some of its impact.

I will only recommend this for those who don't care if the manga is terrible and just want to read something to pass the time. After having finished this series, the only thing I can think of was, "What just happened?" Oh no, not from my lack of knowledge about the Korean language, but how the mangaka just adds conflict upon conflict, like there isn't enough already. It then, in turn, creates even more loose ends within the plot.

The characters are insipid and uninspiring, not to mention that the reader can hardly connect to any of the characters since they're so unrealistic. Only a few relationships presented in this series are actually believable.

All in all, I can promptly say that I've wasted my time reading this.

I've never been a fan of Korean manhwa, but this story sure makes me want to keep on reading.
The art is not wow factor, and sometimes i just laugh at how ridiculous the face expressions are,and well, everything is never perfect. But the plot makes up for it, its very romantic and it gets under your skin, some characters are just plain annoying, but eh, its a good plot and It's interesting enough to make you want to keep on reading regarding how the character is going to end up, because there is a lot going on.

All I have to say is that the concept of this series is pretty interesting but it drags on soooooooooo long. Seriously? 32 volumes? I was so impatient I had to read the raws. I checked out the last 2 volumes and I surprisingly wasn't too lost. I liked the main character's ending though. Overall, decent series, but the author could have gotten to her point quicker.

... Last updated on December 5th, 2010, 7:19pm

it's different, it's not unique and a bit cliché, but it's still an enjoyable read. I think that it's one of those stories that you either hate or love. There's no in between. The story itself starts out pretty like any other gender bender, but as the story progress I can't help to think that the author first fell in some sort of depression along with her work and then suddenly snapped out of it and changed the roles of some characters making them much easier to sympatize with or to start disliking them. The first 5 volumes are nice and potential, then unfortunally there are 10 volumes filled with crap and then comes the last 5 volumes (so far there are 20 scanlated), which are more than brilliant. But it is and it stays a shoujo manhwa. Still I think it's nice, and my rating is based on 5 volumes that are okay, 10 volumes that are the worst and 5 volumes that are the best shoujo volumes I've ever read.

I read this series because the style and summary seems similar to Hwang Mi Ri and the plot sounded much more interesting. So I read the first chapter, the art work was okay if you look at the characters individually their drawn pretty well but what turn me off was that I can't feel anything from the drawing, when the characters are angry, crying or sad it just feels dull (I've read lots of series with horrible art work but at least the author was able to portray the emotions of the characters unlike here), even the comedy it so ridiculous that I can't laugh (and I've read even more ridiculous scene in HMR's work but I laugh).

This is the first series I've read where I can't feel any life from the art work (now I know what that feels like) and I've read 20 chapters hoping it will be better but the way the author portrayed her drawing didn't improve and the worse part is that the story became lamer and lamer so was the characters.

If you have read a variety of series and genre of manga then I recommend save yourself the agony and trouble and SKIP this series otherwise if your new to shoujo series then you might enjoy reading this.

I've been plowing through her work for a while now and geez. All of her completed manhwa are 30-ish volumes! Anyways, that's irrelevant. Back to Love in the Mask.
I can't help but love Love in the Mask. This is mostly because of the main character, Hyun Bin. Hyun Bin is a girl who must masquerade as a boy to live as a body guard. But then she falls in love. Oh no!
It's the typical gender bender, K-drama premise. The girl has to be a guy. The lead guy has a troubled death-filled past. Someone's in a coma. There's a mean girl. There's an innocent girl. There's the best friend of the troubled male lead. There are good guys. There are bad guys. Typical K-drama meets gender bender shoujo.
But Hyun Bin makes it special. She doesn't break easily, and she lives to live. There's something admirable about that. Despite the fact that she's very different from the average girl (making it difficult to relate to her), her situation (being forced to be someone you're not and falling in love with someone you shouldn't fall in love with) is so familiar, that it's hard to not sympathize with her. The only thing I have against her is that her undying love for Yun-ha can make her sound pretty angsty.
Hyun Bin aside, the rest of the characters are pretty mediocre. The plot tends to deviate from the original volume, but it's a welcomed change. And YES, some times the plot is unbelievable, and YES, the plot is cliche. It's shoujo manhwa. Logic doesn't need to apply here. The art's sloppy (especially with anatomy and perspective), but that's normal for HMR. Overall, I'd say that this is one of the less comedic HMR manhwa that I've read, but it's also one of the most genuine HMR manhwa that I've read.

... Last updated on October 12th, 2010, 9:51pm