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Yuletide Fandoms #1: Nabi
Oct. 16th, 2010 04:32 pmHi! It is the time of year for Yuletide nominations and therefore it is the time of year when I attempt to persuade you to watch or read or listen to my favorite obscure fandoms. I am going to go from most obscure to least obscure, as determined by my very scientific polling of two or three friends, and therefore I am starting with Nabi.
Nabi is an ongoing manhwa (Korean comic) by Yeon-Joo Kim with eight or nine volumes out, depending on whether you count the prequel, Nabi: The Prototype, a collection of stories set in the same world and featuring some of the same characters. It is the only part of the series that has been published in English; unless you read Korean, the rest of the series is only available in scanlations.
Nabi is set in a world where everyone wears gorgeous Korean clothing and lives in gorgeous Korean houses from some era I assume people who actually know anything about Korean history can identify, but where there are also airships and pistols. A lot of people still fight with swords, though, presumably because it is more fun to draw. In the troubled, war-torn kingdom of Mu, Lady Howori has created an academy where she raises twenty or thirty orphan children. When the academy is attacked by mysterious fighters, four of the children flee to the neighboring, not-quite friendly kingdom of Su, where they become unwillingly involved in contentious domestic politics and power plays which may be related to their own pasts.
That makes the plot sound very complicated, but this isn't a series about plot or background; there is so little emphasis on the background, in fact, that I couldn't find a good scene-setting panel to clip for you. This is a series about mood and character. Interwoven with the present day events are the characters' memories and dreams and in one case visions of the future. Often, the import of thoughts or images takes pages or volumes to become clear; we receive images in fragments and flashes which only slowly coalesce into meaning.
( The main cast (includes images) )
Nabi is an ongoing manhwa (Korean comic) by Yeon-Joo Kim with eight or nine volumes out, depending on whether you count the prequel, Nabi: The Prototype, a collection of stories set in the same world and featuring some of the same characters. It is the only part of the series that has been published in English; unless you read Korean, the rest of the series is only available in scanlations.
Nabi is set in a world where everyone wears gorgeous Korean clothing and lives in gorgeous Korean houses from some era I assume people who actually know anything about Korean history can identify, but where there are also airships and pistols. A lot of people still fight with swords, though, presumably because it is more fun to draw. In the troubled, war-torn kingdom of Mu, Lady Howori has created an academy where she raises twenty or thirty orphan children. When the academy is attacked by mysterious fighters, four of the children flee to the neighboring, not-quite friendly kingdom of Su, where they become unwillingly involved in contentious domestic politics and power plays which may be related to their own pasts.
That makes the plot sound very complicated, but this isn't a series about plot or background; there is so little emphasis on the background, in fact, that I couldn't find a good scene-setting panel to clip for you. This is a series about mood and character. Interwoven with the present day events are the characters' memories and dreams and in one case visions of the future. Often, the import of thoughts or images takes pages or volumes to become clear; we receive images in fragments and flashes which only slowly coalesce into meaning.
( The main cast (includes images) )
