Sofie > Recent Status Updates

i am giggling and kicking my damn feet, this manga has no right to be as funny as it is

YONA IS SUCH A BAD BITCH OH MY GOD
and i LOVE that hak is so obsessed with her determination and fierceness too!!!!! in a worse version of this story he’d feel threatened by it or would discourage her from becoming stronger for his own ego’s sake but NOPE. if anything he’s MORE attracted to her when she’s stealing his sword

…gija specifically begging for his master to take him away from the village after the topic of marriage is brought up is suspicious to say the least. and by suspicious i mean gay. this man is gay. i feel very confident that i can and will spread the “every found family is gay” agenda through these characters and gija is the clearest one right off the bat

for the sake of my sanity and mental health i’m going to brush past the reveal that EVERYONE in the village is a descendant of the white dragon, meaning that they’ve been fucking their relatives targaryen-style for hundreds of years to keep the blood as pure as possible. i mean yona had a crush on su-won for years, and he’s her first cousin so. i guess this is just part of these fantasy stories huh

GOD this volume is good too i feel like i’m gonna end up making everything 5 stars on this reread
i definitely mentioned it before but hak is so gojo here if he were more self-pitying. both warrior prodigies who force themselves to be seen as nothing more than protectors and tools. they can’t WANT anything or anyone if they are objects, they can only do their job to the best of their ability with no distractions

i’m so ready to sob at this backstory again!!!!! yun being prepared to die if his plan to steal food backfires but not wanting to hurt anyone else???? he was SO privately relieved to see that ik-su was still alive, so much so that he even used his probably very limited supply of medicine on him. he’s a tough, jaded kid but he’s so GOOD and ik-su sees it immediately

oh sweet naive yona you cannot simply call hak a good boy while petting his head and expect him not to lose his mind (and try to play it off and deflect with teasing of course of course)

okay okay so the priests getting banished was way before yu-hon was set to potentially take the throne (based on ik-su’s age it was around 28 years ago? i think?) but he did still get rid of them bc of his own selfish warmongering reasons nonetheless. maybe one of them also had an early prediction about his reign being a bloody one and he stamped it out before it could spread (but ju-nam heard it anyway)

love that the main trio are all reborn in a sense at this point in the narrative
hak and yona are literally presumed dead but have also sacrificed parts of themselves in order to survive and protect each other. hak gave up his identity as part of the wind tribe, and yona cut her hair off
and now su-won, after learning that he has now lost everything in pursuit of his goal, baptizes himself before becoming king

“if you die i’ll never forgive you” so let’s die together okay cool cool cool
i’m so sensitive about ships that fall to their potential deaths together like this has vanoé written ALLLLL over it

yona comes out swinging a fucking sword at these soldiers and the first thing one of them says is “calm down” like ??????????? the social commentary is strong and i love it

i want this page spread framed!!!!!!!!!! what a perfect moment of reclamation of power and killing off her old, weaker self
i LOVE this entire sequence cause tae-jun grabbing her by the hair is the ultimate symbol of how he sees her as this weak little girl who would never cut off a part of herself that is attached to her aesthetic beauty. but no! he’s fucking wrong! she’s a bad bitch and he should be scared!

this manga is so good at building up to and executing grand moments of cathartic courageousness AND ITS ONLY VOLUME 2. i can’t even imagine how many more badass yona moments there are to come

i forget if this is a reveal that i’d already gotten at some point on my first read but i’m gonna put this prediction here anyway: i wonder if yu-hon expelled the priests from the palace because they foresaw that he’d be a bad king and advised the previous king to name il as his successor instead

HE IS SO WHIPPED PLS AJXNDNXKDKKDKD he was acting all apathetic and playing up the gross womanizer facade (which yona just raises an eyebrow at like “are you kidding me dude be so fr”) but as soon as she says that she WANTS HIM????? he’s quite literally on the ground. hak you loverboy

i was really just soaking this volume in and not stopping to comment but i have to note that i did tear up again at this part as i'm sure i did on the first read. awesome cool love it here (i would die for the wind tribe)

in hak's flashback from volume 1, he's 15 and refuses to call mun-deok "grandpa". but then in yona's flashback, when hak is 9-ish, he calls him "grandpa" naturally. and now in present day when he's 18, he starts to say "grandpa" but corrects himself to use the more proper title in front of the tribe. LOVE this attention to detail and i'm interested to track it further as we get more flashbacks

i know it was probably just the most realistic and practical choice, but having yona get attacked by a snake of all things when she's thinking back on su-won's betrayal????? FANTASTIC symbolism. especially the panel that has the snake coiling around her ankle with the words "the man you knew never existed"

seeing a memory from hak's pov (focused on how he became yona's bodyguard) and then seeing one from yona's pov (focused on the friendship between the main trio and her relationship with her father, and also interestingly before yu-hon's death!!! so the "real", un-jaded su-won) is SO brilliant. and i love how we see all 3 of them looking up at the sky to show how they're still connected and reminiscing simultaneously

okay i refuse to look at any of the tags for fear of spoilers cause there is SO much of this story that i haven't read yet but i'm calling it now that the hak/su-won tag is RIFE with content. so far i genuinely don't see any real romantic interest from su-won to yona (just a deep platonic love that he's trying to push down to avenge his father) but i do see it in his interactions with hak!!! bi hak supremacy

OBSESSED with how it was hak's idea to act all lovey-dovey in front of kang tae-jun to try to get him to back off, but as soon as yona says that she loves hak to play along with the scheme he's immediately flustered and blushing like a fool. what a loser i adore him

i really appreciate that hak is never legitimately MEAN to yona, even when he teases her or gets snippy cause he's jealous of how much she likes su-won. it all reads as very believable for a 15 year old, and it's clear that yona gives as much as she gets too which is helpful. they really are such a lovely example of childhood best friends to lovers with great banter and i can't wait to see how it continues to develop

min-su's incredibly sudden and unremarkable death is such a great way to end this second chapter after the first ends with il's death, which is the exact opposite in scale and consequence. i presume it foreshadows the deaths to come, many of which will not be as bold or as mourned as il's. but all of them will weigh on yona. min-su directly sacrificed himself for her, and yet he gets no hero's death

hak keeping his cool until su-won says that yona witnessed her father's death is DELICIOUS. god i love him
also love how after that, hak stops calling him "lord". they had that brief convo before where su-won had asked him to stop using such formal titles, but hak didn't listen then. he "knew his place". but now? he has no respect left for su-won and he wants him to KNOW it

okay. big questions to keep in mind:
why did il kill yu-hon? i'm SURE there's more to the story than him killing him out of fear that he'd usurp him or just in cold blood. it was probably about protecting kohka
how does su-won even know about the murder?? when did he find out? he keeps talking about everything happening 10 years ago so that implies that it was all in pretty quick succession. did he witness it????

"i want them to be happy together" over the image of su-won's sword covered in il's blood??????? what a succinctly tragic panel. if yona's cute little shojo bubble wasn't busted already, that'll do it

i'm only 5 volumes in but going back to the beginning and seeing how much yona has grown up and changed even just in that short time is ASTOUNDING. i love that her infatuation with su-won is very clearly tied to her naivety and desire to lean on someone else for strength rather than finding it within herself. that affection and everything it represents forcibly being severed is the perfect catalyst for her growth

i've been craving something epic and fantastical that requires less brain power than captive prince so what better time to get back into yona of the dawn
i should not put this in writing but i'm hoping i can catch up before the final volume gets its english release in july......we'll see how that goes (and if the series even stays good enough to make me want to read that many volumes)

talk your shit madoka!!! happy to see that at least one other kikyo student is fucking normal cause my god is this rivalry way more intense than it has any right to be

SUBARU I MISSED YOU YOU ARE THE FUCKING BEST
i know this manga is all earnest and wholesome and shit but god what i would give to see subaru punch a bitch that looks at kaoruko the wrong way. she and saku need to team up and secretly beat up anyone who badmouths rintaro and kaoruko now that news of their relationship is gonna start circulating