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REVIEW: The Water Dragon's Bride GN 2




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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:19 am Reply with quote
Ugh. Really hate tropes that involve women or girls being jealous of other women or girls because they're competing for male attention, and adding a son to the mix just smacks of something worse--Freudian Oedipal tropes. Is this woman so upset at the idea of her son befriending a little girl that she's trying to kill the girl? That points as much to insecurity and fear of abandonment as it does to evil, but it certainly manifests as evil...
Now that the kids have been aged up to teens, I suppose the next step is to go full blown fairytale tragic love triangle with even more Oedipul implications from rival evil mom. But the art is so pretty, and Rei Toma has a good reputation as a manga-ka, so I'll continue to pay attention to the reviews of subsequent volumes. The story can always improve with some character development, world building, or even new insight into evil mom's background/thought processes.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2606
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:04 pm Reply with quote
I don't like the trope either; it's why "Snow White" is one of my least favorite tale types. Have you ever read Gilbert and Gubar's discussion of it from their book The Madwoman in the Attic? It's a very interesting feminist interpretation of both trope and tale. This essay discusses it pretty well (Gilbert and Gubar's piece doesn't appear to be available online) and has a lot of very good analysis of the trope that works with how Toma is using it.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3017
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 1:55 pm Reply with quote
I keep on hearing that the series drastically shifts gears after the second volume, but I really hope this is all leading somewhere good, because based on these reviews there's very little in this series that I wouldn't find either problematic or personally uninteresting.
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riceball1759



Joined: 11 Jul 2013
Posts: 9
PostPosted: Sat Aug 05, 2017 12:12 pm Reply with quote
She's "all grown up" in Vol 3. It definitely does take an interesting turn in the next volume (couldn't help myself). Almost as if the "real plot" is still in the works, but it's getting there. It's intriguing, so I'm sticking with it until something either drives me away or keeps me hooked.
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