{"id":1189,"date":"2009-05-01T00:01:50","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T07:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mangavillage.co.uk\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2009-05-01T00:01:50","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T07:01:50","slug":"divine-melody-volume-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/2009\/05\/01\/divine-melody-volume-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Divine Melody Volume 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cai-Sheng is a celestial fox demon raised by a group of wild fox demons, who hope she will master the ability to transform into a male and same them from extinction.\u00a0 One day, she befriends a little boy and girl, who save her from a dog attack.\u00a0 Her caretaker marks them with symbols that will not disappear until Cai-Sheng repays her debt.\u00a0 Two hundred years later, Cai-Sheng meets the reincarnated boy and girl and decides to repay her debt by match-making them, but things get complicated when the girl falls for Cai-Sheng’s male form!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>By Yi Huan
\nPublisher:<\/strong> DR Masters
\nAge Rating:<\/strong> Teen (13+)
\nGenre:<\/strong> Romance\/Gender Bender
\nPrice:<\/strong> $9.95<\/p>\n

Divine Melody<\/em> is a Chinese manhua that is filled lots of romantic possibilities, but still manages to keep them from getting convoluted.\u00a0 It lays down a good foundation in this first volume, introducing a lot of characters without overloading the reader with too much information.<\/p>\n

The main romance in this story is the love triangle between Han Yun-Shi, Su Ping, and Cai-Sheng’s male form.\u00a0 I-Huan is taking her time with it, just introducing all the players in this first volume.\u00a0 Su Ping is under a demon’s curse, and Han Yun-Shi is an exorcist.\u00a0 Cai-Sheng runs into Han Yun-Shi finding his mark first, and follows him to help, and discovers Su Ping.\u00a0 As her male-form is stronger, Cai-Sheng forces the demon, a human-formed cat, to release Su Ping and then help Yun-Shi by appearing to be chased away by him.\u00a0 Thus, the three friends are reunited.\u00a0 Yun-Shi is smitten by Ping, but, Ping is more reserved, most likely thinking of Cai-Sheng’s male form, the man who really saved her, despite being told it was Yun-Shi.\u00a0 For now, everyone are friends, but the seeds are now planted.<\/p>\n

There is another triangle brewing, Though I wouldn’t call it a love triangle.\u00a0 It’s more of an antagonistic triangle.\u00a0 While she was being raised with the Fox Demons, Cai-Sheng was teased about reaching her male form quickly, which led her to feel, rightfully so, that they didn’t care about her.\u00a0 She wants to meet someone who likes her for who she is, not what.\u00a0 Enter Wei Zi-Que, a deity who has been searching for Cai-Sheng at her parents’ behest.\u00a0 He makes a far from good impression on Cai-Sheng and she refuses when he tries to take her back to Heaven.\u00a0 But he isn’t giving up so fast.\u00a0 A connection could be made between them.\u00a0 The third side to this triangle is Yu-Niang.\u00a0 She was part of the Fox Demon clan that took Cai-Sheng, but was banished for disobeying the Shifu, leader of the Fox Demons.\u00a0 But, she has found Cai-Sheng, and knows that she has attained her male form.\u00a0 She is just as determined to get her as Zi-Que.<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed reading Divine Melody<\/em>.\u00a0 The characters are well-developed.\u00a0 No one falls into the usual shojo stereotypes, and none of them appear to be dumb as bricks.\u00a0 A big plus in my book.\u00a0 I really liked how the plot was built up too.\u00a0 It starts with the broad base of the past, then moves to the present to be re-introduced to characters that are now completely different.\u00a0 The first triangle is set up before moving to the second with its more overt conflicts, compared to the first triangles’ more inverted conflict.<\/p>\n

The art is absolutely stunning!\u00a0 I-Huan draws her characters beautifully, and because it is a shojo, the guys as are beautiful as the girls.\u00a0 Especially Cai-Sheng’s male form, which looks sufficiently different from her female form.\u00a0 Even her clothes change, though only in style, not design.\u00a0 It’s a historical shojo, so everyone is dressed in the traditional Chinese costumes (which I also love!).\u00a0 There is also a two-page extra from I-Huan, explaining the history of the Fox Demon in Chinese folklore, and the origin of a couple of characters.<\/p>\n

Overall, I found Divine Melody<\/em> to be a great read.\u00a0 It’s a good solid romance with great characters and beautiful art.\u00a0 The good foundation this first volume gives, bodes well for more great reading as the series progresses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cai-Sheng is a celestial fox demon raised by a group of wild fox demons, who hope she will master the ability to transform into a male and same them from extinction.\u00a0 One day, she befriends a little boy and girl, who save her from a dog attack.\u00a0 Her caretaker marks them with symbols that will not disappear until Cai-Sheng repays her debt.\u00a0 Two hundred years later, Cai-Sheng meets the reincarnated boy and girl and decides to repay her debt by match-making them, but things get complicated when the girl falls for Cai-Sheng’s male form! By Yi Huan Publisher: DR Masters Age Rating: Teen (13+) Genre: Romance\/Gender Bender Price: $9.95 Divine Melody is a Chinese manhua that is filled lots of romantic possibilities, but still manages to keep them from getting convoluted.\u00a0 It lays down a good foundation in this first volume, introducing a lot of characters without overloading the reader with too much information. The main romance in this story is the love triangle between Han Yun-Shi, Su Ping, and Cai-Sheng’s male form.\u00a0 I-Huan is taking her time with it, just introducing all the players in this first volume.\u00a0 Su Ping is under a demon’s curse, and Han Yun-Shi is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[36,49,83,110,120,135],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews-reviews","tag-chinese","tag-dr-masters","tag-manga","tag-review","tag-shojo","tag-teen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2umma-jb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}