Annarasumanara

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I'm not seeing where all the hype is coming from on this one. To me, this was a forgettable manwha.

Story [6/10] - I like the atmosphere of the fairground, and the main theme of holding on to childhood dreams. That's about it. Everything else was kinda cliche and forgettable.

Art [4/10] - This is my least favorite part. I don't think the art is inherently bad. There were plenty of moments where the art was great, especially the flashback in chapter 25. However, during 95% of the story, we are treated with the depiction of the main character, who is drawn like a doll and has ... little to no change in facial expression throughout the entire manwha. This was just odd to me as some characters, like Il-Deung, changed expression normally. It also made it a lot harder to feel connection to the main character. The magician also didn't change much in expression, but I think that might be for a reason and at least he isn't drawn annoyingly. I will say that the cover art is great and I wish more of the art in the story was like it.

Character [7/10] - Same deal with the plotline, these are just not memorable characters. Not bad, not good, just fine. However, I will +1 just because the magician was original.

Enjoyment [6/10] - It was a quick read, with not an overbearing amount of text on the pages. I enjoyed that.

Graced by a cute art style that expresses the manhwa’s childish overview, Annarasumanara is about all the magic we miss once we grow up into what we consider an adult. This definition is one that’s usually coined by society, but it’s completely left our interpretation. Yet we’re hardly given control of how we truly want to maneuver ourselves during the challenges of our present and the catastrophes of our past: one where we leave behind everything that was important to us to live a real life.

Following the steps of Ah-ee Yoon, Annarasumanara explores what it means to believe and perform magic. Ah-ee finds herself lost ... in her school life, but she wants something more than just grades and money. She’s burdened with the game of numbers, but all that starts to change when she meets the magician called Eui Lee who is a so-called real magician.

At the forefront, this is a romantic slice of life with multiple hidden meanings layered between the nuanced approaches to presenting us with what it means to live a mundane life while realizing that we can either complain or create our own memory lane. There’s an opportunity cost and consequence to all our actions, and sometimes the most obvious ones cause us the most turmoil. We’re so hard-wired into believing that we have to live one way or another, that strangers always bring dangers, and that money is the most important aspect of life. Annarasumanara plays judge, jury, and executioner to each of those topics through its three central players.

For a large part of this short series, Ah-ee confronts the idea of whether Eui Lee is actually a real magician or if everything is a trick and she just wants to believe in it because of the magic she never chased as a child.

Yet as the series goes on, we witness how much comfort the characters have confusing their sense of self and responsibilities. Ah-ee Yoon can’t focus on her home as much, Il Deung-Na does poorly on his exams, and even Eui Lee starts pulling off some shady stunts in the name of protection.

Ultimately, the idea behind real magic may be Ah-ee’s ability to live as an adult and as a child, to recover all the splendid youthful days she missed out on because of her family situation. Perhaps, life is the ultimate magic trick, one where we have to live through the realistic lie and deception, knowing it’s simply a contraption for repetition and exhaustion.

But at the same time, the concept of magic is a sense of clarity that detaches us from societal expectations, allowing us to find our own spark and path in life. This idea is expressed seamlessly through Il Deung-Na’s realization that he’s on a cold path to nowhere besides where his parents want him to be.

The series starts questioning what it truly means to be an adult, and by the end, it’s really about finding a balance between being the child we never got to be yet fulfilling our responsibilities as an adult so that we may present ourselves with the chance to everything else we’ve ever wanted. Life is a compromise, and the magic is everything that’s nice.

Slowly, these aspects become the secrets of the silent streets, the quiet of colorful conversation, the relief of raging regrets, and the whispers of words unspoken. The end is left open intentionally so that we can continue how Ah-ee’s story continues, and we relate to her struggles, all the while listening for that opportune moment when we get what we’ve always wanted.

Till the very end, we’re left guessing if Eui Lee was ever a real magician, or if he could simply translate the visions in his heads into the eyes of the rest. There’s a magical element to the Annarasumanara, but it has nothing to do with magic — it’s truly about the special people we meet in our lives while understanding that there are things only we care about. Those aspects shine brightest because they speak to us in ways words never can, in ways that we can only feel — that is the sound of magic: an essence that fills our ears with pleasant presence.