Mojito

Another absolutely wonderful volume in this excellent series. The Seven Seas release looks really beautiful, and I'm so happy to have a physical copy of this in English at long last, as well as an official English translation of one of Mojito's extra comics.

The world is opening up and we're seeing so much more of different characters, as well as some lovely Horus/Seth. Mojito's art is so beautiful; I particularly love Horus' wings, all the environmental details, and the way the characters tussle. Seth is a delight as always.

Looking forward to volume 3!… (mais)

This is an absolutely phenomenal series, with beautiful art, wonderful characters, and great story. I’ve been a fan of it for multiple years, and I’m so happy it’s finally gotten an English physical release. It is a dark fantasy series and deals with difficult themes, including victim blaming, incest (yeah they’re gods and it’s in the mythology, but it’s still incest), murder, slavery, sexual assault, trauma, domestic abuse, adultery, and war, so if that’s not to your taste, I would avoid it. Mojito dove into a lot of really neat mythology and history to research for this series, and it really shines through.

This volume really focuses a lot on Seth as a powerful god and tyrant, and how he’s destroying Egypt, but also hints at what drove him to this point, ending on Osiris’ manipulations and his assaulting Seth.

And for a review of the release itself:

The webcomic exists in two forms online: an mature/uncensored release, and a 15+/censored release. There are two versions of the physical English release: the hardcover is the mature/uncensored version, and the paperback is the 15+/censored version. But there aren’t any major changes concerning that until chapter 28, so there’s really no difference in the volumes until maybe volume 3 (volume 1 covers 10 chapters, so the first three volumes will likely cover ~10 chapters each). I would honestly recommend getting the hardcover if you can afford it, because the hardcover is nice, and the paperback is kind of cheap (by comparison). They’re the same size (outside the hardcover cover being larger), and the interiors are the same. That being said, both are still pretty books and worth it getting, and the paperback is a little cheaper, particularly if you want to save up for the hardcovers later.

This is not just the Tappytoon English version in book form. The panels in many places have been modified (sometimes cropped, typically darkened for printing, which seems to be something from the Korean and Taiwanese printings), and the translation itself is a bit different, with redrawn/written sound effects, some more organized grammatical structure, some fixed typos, some switched out words, and slightly modified sentences, likely for space considerations and to improve flow. I only found one weirdly deleted entire sentence, and one seeming typo, and generally the text changes make it flow better in English (particularly when it fixes weird writing things in the Tappytoon translation). So all in all, the translation is good, at least from a flow perspective, since I have no idea how accurate it is to the original Korean. My primary criticism is that, like Tappytoon, the translator is not listed (the company is, not the translator). Whoever they are should be properly credited like everyone else (though it's nice so many people are credited).

The book covers are lovely and I'm so happy we're getting the Korean book covers.

With the caveat that the art is beautiful and relying on licensed versions of the comic pages and Internet connectivity really isn't a great solution, the art has some problems in this release. I’m not sure if this is Seven Seas’ fault or the result of using the same process that the Korean and Taiwanese print runs got, but the darkening of panels ruins a lot of the art, destroying much of the bright coloring, and making details harder to track. The occasional cropping can also be particularly brutal at times, removing the sides of panels and extra detailing. In some instances, speech bubbles have been moved to actually cover artwork more, which is frustrating. Due to, I imagine, space considerations, panels have been squished together more, sometimes covering each other, which is particularly egregious on one page with some of the most detailed architecture in the volume, and one panel of which is now 1/5 covered by another panel, when it was on its own in the webcomic version. It’s still a beautiful comic, and cropping is far rarer than not cropping, but the darkening effect was frustrating.

Also if any Seven Seas employees are out there, please try to do an ebook of this. I’d really love one. I’ve been reading on Tappytoon for years, but I’d love to be able to read a version of this that doesn’t rely on network connectivity.

All in all, this is generally a really wonderful release, I'm so happy to own it physically in English, and look forward to the rest of the volumes!… (mais)