Moon Boy 1 by Lee YoungYou: C+

From the back cover:
Apart from the fact that her eyes turn red when the moon rises, Myung-Ee is your average, albeit boy crazy, 5th grader. After picking a fight with her classmate Yu-Da Lee, she discovers a startling secret: the two of them are “earth rabbits” being hunted by the “fox tribe” of the moon!

Five years pass and Myung-Ee transfers to a new school in search of pretty boys. There, she unexpectedly reunited with Yu-Da. The problem is, he mysteriously doesn’t remember a thing about her or their shared past at all!

Review:
The back cover blurb actually says, “Apart from the fact the color of her eyes turn red when moon rises…” This does not bode well.

Actually, though, I thought I would dislike this, but I don’t. It has problems, but it’s better than I expected. Aside from its grammatical errors, the back cover blurb covers the initial story pretty well. Myung-Ee is an “earth rabbit,” as was her childhood classmate Yu-Da before he vanished and everybody but Myung-Ee forgot he ever existed. After she runs into him at her new school, various people impart the rest of the story to her: Yu-Da is actually a “black rabbit,” whose liver (oh yes, the foxes eat the rabbits’ livers) can grant immortality. His memory has been wiped and he’s guarded by a Student Council full of fox tribe folks who are just waiting for him to achieve adulthood.

Meanwhile, the Kendo Club is helmed by some guy who claims to be a warrior in an army that wants to protect Yu-Da. He’s in 12th grade, but he looks about nine, collects Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and is prone to weeping. Wacky, eh? Anyway, they need one more member or their club will be shut down by the Student Council. Guess who volunteers? Oh, and Myung-Ee gets bullied by some girls, too. And her new friend is really a cat.

And there’s where Moon Boy loses me some. The basic plot is out there, but it makes enough internal sense that it doesn’t annoy me. But the art is problematic—people who’re supposedly short not looking short, astoundingly improbable hairstyles, jarringly unattractive “comedic” moments—and the cast, while manageable at first, bloats rather rapidly in the last couple of chapters. All of a sudden there’s some fox queen on the moon and some random chick making cryptic remarks in the shadows. I kind of don’t want to have to think this much and remember this many plot threads for the likes of Moon Boy.

Lastly, I end with a quote. I have a certain fondness for noting combinations of words that’ve probably never been written or spoken before, and Moon Boy comes up with a doozy. Enjoy!

Never mind all that earth rabbit stuff right now. I have to get my panties!