Manhwa Entering Stage Left
Manga readers, you should read them if you haven't already
So I’ve read manhwa before. The first one I’ve read was actually Goong, which is the origin of the famous K-drama Princess Hours in English. I have to admit I wound up only reading about half of the series and didn’t bother finishing it. I wound up not liking the way the story progressed in the manhwa and gave up on it. For the longest time there wasn’t as much manhwa made available in English outside of a few titles like Goong. However it’s clearly changing.
As I’ve mentioned in the second episode of my podcast, there are now anime series like Solo Leveling and Doctor Elise based on manhwa being produced. What a new and wonderful world of content to check out! I had to do some research, but I found out that Doctor Elise was available as a translated webtoon on this website. There’s actually at least a couple other ones I’ve discovered (thanks Wikipedia!). However the only one I’ve been using is called Lezhin Comics.
Doctor Elise is a really fascinating series. It’s a story that involves a double reincarnation. Elise is a spoiled aristocrat who marries the future Emperor Linden. Linden doesn’t love her and she hardly demonstrates any good qualities to make him interested in her. Her behavior has consequences that results in her death.
She gets reincarnated as Song Ji-Hyeon (comics)/Sakamoto Aoi (anime), an orphan who ends up becoming a world class surgeon. Unfortunately this surgeon dies and she wakes up as young Elise again who is about to become betrothed to Crown Prince Linden. This is Elise’s second chance to be a better person and change her fate: by becoming a doctor.
I wound up binge reading this comic on Lezhin’s app. I recently finished reading another called Iris: The Lady and Her Smartphone. There’s actually a few other titles I’m thinking about reading next, but I haven’t quite decided just yet which one to continue with next. So I’ll end things here with this.
Have you read manhwa? If you have, what have you tried so far? If you haven’t would you consider it? Stayed tuned as at some point in the future, I’ll probably do reviews of these on the podcast.