Manga Review: White Night Melody by Selena Lin
Colleen and Jing Ping don’t remember much of their lives before they were turned into living dolls, though they believe that she was a princess of some sort, and he was a government official. They’re also fuzzy on most of their years as dolls before coming into the possession of the family of Ke Lim (mother), Qiang Shu (father) and Gao Pi (toddler). One day, Gao Pi mischievously tosses the glass slipper marble keepsakes that came with the dolls into water.
The two dolls abruptly turn into human beings “again”, looking about fifteen years old. While they’re out walking around the neighborhood to celebrate, Colleen and then Jing PIng abruptly revert to dolls. It’s discovered that if the marbles are allowed to dry, or the teens overexert themselves, they will become dolls again, and rest and water are needed to bring them back to human.
While the family is visiting a fair, a mysterious robed figure tries to push Colleen off a high place. Jing Ping is able to save her, but not capture the attacker.
Qiang Shu, who is wealthy, is able to get the new teenagers enrolled in the nearby high school. They’re initially excited to learn, but soon find lessons much more demanding than expected. Especially Colleen, who can speak the Taiwanese dialect of Chinese but never learned to read it. She excels only in English. Meanwhile Jing Ping’s knowledge base is somewhere about a century out of date. Also, there are two fellow students who seem to recognize the protagonists, even though our heroes have no recollection of them.
This is a Taiwanese comic book, but since that’s so heavily influenced by manga, I’m placing it in the “manga” category for easy sorting. It’s got very “shoujo” art. Per the author’s marginal notes, this would appear to be a sequel to another series about Ke Lim and her family. We’re clearly missing a lot of backstory, though since Colleen and Jing Ping are mysterious figures to begin with, and this series apparently will focus on that, it’s only a minor irritation.
There’s only two long chapters in this volume, so not a lot of plot progression, and we are clearly in the early set-up phase of the story.
The best bit of humor in the story so far is when the teacher assigns all the “pretty people” to the back row of seats in the classroom to make it harder to stare at them rather than pay attention to the lessons.
This series was published in America by Tokyopop, and is thus long out of print. It’s mild fun, but may not be worth tracking down unless you are a Selena Lin fan.
