Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun

Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun is a Manwha released in the English language for the North American market by Infinity Studios LLC. Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun is the prequel series to NOW and was illustrated/written by Sung-Woo-Park of NOW fame.
Content
The story goes that in the kingdom of Goguryeo, a martial artist named O’Rhang Yhun’ is assigned a task by his master who is lying upon his deathbed. This task is to deliver a message to his eldest brother (explained in the title’s footnotes, this isn’t O’Rhang’s blood brother, but an elder member of the clan) whom the master wishes to have return from fighting in enemy territory. Unfortunately just as O’Rhang is to depart for his mission, his master dies and the 2nd eldest brands him a traitor who is defecting to the enemy’s side. The 2nd eldest sets the Goguryeo army upon O’Rhang.
Left for dead in the wilderness, O’Rhang, who believes himself to be dying, sees a vision of a beautiful woman descending upon him. Believing it to be an angel coming to collect his soul, he fades into darkness only to reawaken sometime later in a run down village besieged by bandits.
Who was the beautiful woman? Will O’Rhang accomplish his mssion? And just what are the evil machinations of Pa Goon Sung? Come explore the beginning of what seems to be a wonderfully told and beautifully illustrated story of romance, action and sinister plots!
Presentation/Packaging
Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun is presented in a larger than normal size format. The pages are wider and taller than “regular” Manga/Manwha. This makes for the text to be a bit larger along with the artwork, which is a very nice change. The paper is also of a higher brightness than most other company’s Manga/Manwha, but slightly less so than other titles by Infinity Studios.
I’m not sure if it is a side effect of the larger format or if this was as the original artwork was given to Infinity Studios, but there seems to be a screen door type effect on a lot of the artwork. I’m not a printing expert, so there may be a technical term for this that I am unaware of. It doesn’t really distract from the story being told, but it was a little awkward at first.
The book also has a fantastic high quality slip cover on high quality glossy paper. On the front is O’Rhang and on the reverse is a Chinese style dragon. When the slip cover is removed, the cover contains a line art drawing, different from the artwork on the slip cover, of O’Rhang while the back has a line art version of the Chinese dragon. Very nice.
Also included is a fold out mini poster on embossed paper. This isn’t usually something I’ve come to expect in my English language releases, since most English language companies releasing Manga/Manwha tend to drop extras like this, sometimes even dropping the inclusion of the 2-3 color pages the Japanese/Korean books had in them. This was yet another pleasant and high quality surprise.
For an MSRP of $10.95, only slightly more expensive than the average price of a Manga/Manwha trade paperback, you are given a lot of extras that one would expect to pay $15 or more for. I don’t think anyone can argue they didn’t get their money’s worth on this one.
Text
The text is clear and legible. The sound effects are translated mostly just under their original Korean language versions.
The character names retain their Korean phonetic spellings, and while this may cause some trouble for English language speakers at first, I honestly wouldn’t want it presented in any other fashion.
Included in the back of the book in an appendix is quite a bit of background information on many of the things presented in this volume, with some history thrown in for good measure. They also included a translation of Sung-Woo-Park’s notes in the back of the book.
Another really nice addition was the inclusion of the translations of the special attacks every time they are used, along with very nice margin notes to describe things as you are reading. The notes are never inserted over any of the artwork, they always appear in the margins between panels, another thing I greatly appreciate.
Artwork
As is expected from Sung-Woo-Park, the artwork is finely detailed and the faces have nice range of expression. All of the characters seem to be at the same level of detail, as opposed to say, a secondary character being treated to a lesser amount of detail than a main character. No name characters are about as detailed as one would expect from a no name character.
Final Thoughts
Chun Rhang Yhur Jhun volume 1 is nearly perfect. The artwork is high quality and the presentation is of the highest quality. The only complaint is the screen door effect on some of the artwork.
Ha-Rhang Whur was my favorite character, as not only is she highly attractive, but she kicks major butt to boot!
For $10.95 you get what I would say is the nicest Manga/Manwha release, in terms of quality of extras and the amount of extras, we’ve ever received in North America. Infinity Studios never fails to impress me with their releases.