Bug’s Book Review! P.3

‘A Magical Girl Retires’ by Park Seolyeon, Translated into English by Anton Hur.

Welcome Reader,

To another edition of Bug’s Book Review.  Today I will be covering A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon, and translated into English by Anton Hur. 

I picked this book up while I was in Colorado, visiting my sister.  I entered the book store and was immediately overwhelmed by my choices.  I picked out maybe 10 books that looked interesting, and narrowed it down until I had a sensible number of 4.  I had to make a decision, and I eventually decided on this book, along with another which I am now currently reading.  

I was drawn to A Magical Girl Retires because of its catchy title and cover.  This cover has pastel colors and manhwa-style cover art.  The premise of the book was a refreshing concept.  In a world where magical girls save the day, when this 29-year old woman becomes a magical girl, she realizes it's not all sunshine and rainbows.  Her magical talisman is a credit card, and she has to figure out how to activate her powers in order to save the day.  I enjoyed the idea that this novel is written from the perspective of an older woman, as most magical girl protagonists are from 12-14 years old.  And I liked the mature element that seemed to carry through the rest of the story.  

On top of that, I love Sailor Moon!  Incest and grooming and weird I’m14butitsmyjobtosavetheworldbutalsoI’mreincarnatedandprincessofthemoon and all!  I love the concept of magical girls, and have been in love with magical girls since I was a kid. In fact the first magical girl anime I ever watched was Powerpuff Girls Z, an anime retelling of the Powerpuff girls story.  The girls are gifted powers and use these compacts that go onto their belts as transformation talismans.  The episodes were quick, and -a magical girl necessity- the transformation sequences were simply magical.  Catchy tunes, bright colors, appearing outfits as they spun and danced and punched.  As a 23 year old woman-presenting person, I was very excited by the idea of a magical girl story written for an older audience.  

Now, some books make you wanna sit down and write a review because they were just such a delight to read and experience and some books piss you off so badly you need to write a 1 star Yelp review.

It’s almost a month since I bought the novel and I’ve finally finished reading my current book.  After a long history of biblical religions and dives into theology, I can refresh with a fun fantasy magical girl story!  I open the novel, and I’m confused.  I’m met by illustrations.  They’re beautiful, but for a moment I panicked that I accidentally bought a manhwa.  Not that I dislike manhwa.  But I turned the page and there was writing, so I did buy a book.  But there’s something off with the writing.  There is a weird border around the text, like the outermost border around a manhwa page, and the text is huge.  

The book isn’t very long but from just the first page I’m scared that I have accidentally bought Part 1 in a series.  I hate reading series.  It stems from when I tried to read Harry Potter, and only got to book 5 before I had to tap out.  Then I felt like I wasted all that time because I couldn’t even finish the story.  (I later realize that although this book might be in a series, the story is wrapped up in the end.  Which is even more concerning).  The book is short and the text is big.  As I start reading I get very concerned by how enjoyable the story is going to be.  Spoiler alert: Not Very Enjoyable.

I finished the entire novel in almost two hours.  It should be noted, I’m not a fast reader by any means.  The story is so fast paced, even though it's supposed to be happening over the course of a few weeks.  The parts that are actually interesting, like the part where the main character questions the morality of defeating the villain, are completely overshadowed by the fast pacing and poor writing skills.  Which I’m not sure to attribute to the author or the translator.  The book is originally written in Korean, written by award-winning author, Park Seolyeon.  So, it would be surprising to me if I think an award-winning author is a bad writer.  But from reading the translator’s note at the end of the book, I’m assuming it's the translator’s wording I dislike so much.  

This book is written like the first rough draft outline of a manhwa, but the author couldn’t find an artist so she turned it into a book.  Which is weird because there is an associated illustration at the beginning of every chapter.  This is helpful because the author doesn’t describe the visual look of the characters at all, past their age and wardrobe, besides when she calls certain characters cute.  Also! The author literally describes a character as a “dwarf”.  As in, an offensive term for a Little Person.  It might be difficult to translate from Korean, but the translator should have known better than leaving that in the book.  In addition to this story feeling like a rejected manhwa, the main character often complains about life like “this isn’t some manhwa series where everything works out”.  Literally yes it is.  I WISH you were wrong.  I WISH.  We’ll touch on wishes later.  

I’ll explain the plot now, which I probably should have done before complaining about the rest of the book.  However I would like to provide a link to a more thorough plot-review.  Most of the reviews on this book are too polite and make the story more enjoyable than it actually is.  But this review is actually more telling of how the story is perceived and told.  “Liz Bourke Reviews A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon” https://locusmag.com/2024/05/liz-bourke-reviews-a-magical-girl-retires-by-park-seolyeon/ .  

This review is more accurate than most reviews and is an enjoyable, but polite, assessment on the plot.  Honestly, I don’t think I can do a review of the plot as diligently as Liz Bourke, so I’ll give you a more specific overview than her’s, but I won’t touch on every part of the story.  Also, I will not care about spoilers, so if you want to save the ending to read the story yourself, I suggest Liz Bourke’s review.  

The main character is 29 and dealing with thoughts of suicide, so any concern that I might have accidentally picked up a YA novel is not warranted.  When she tries to jump off the Mapo Bridge in Seoul, a magical girl called Ah Roa, the Magical Girl of Clairvoyance, saves the protagonist’s life, and tells her she might be the key to saving the world.  What is this threat that might end humanity?  Global Warming.  And as Ah Roa explains the magical girl system over the course of a week, she gives insight to the possible solutions to Global Warming that our protagonist would have to carry out.  Ah Roa is convinced that our main character (who is never named(?)) is the Magical Girl of Time.  And her power of time manipulation can either save the world from Global Warming, by stopping time and allowing the Magical Girls of the world to destroy the big corporations that are ruining the planet, or by going back in time to destroy all of humanity in order to save the planet’s future.  Are you still with me?  Our main character doesn’t really think anything about this and is convinced she is also the Magical Girl of Time, since when she was a kid all she wanted to do was be a clockmaker.  But when the protagonist’s powers are activated through the creation of a magical talisman, the object turns out to be a credit card, a little confusing.  When the protagonist is trying to activate her transformation sequence, it is revealed that the Magical Girl of Time has already activated her powers and used them to brutally murder her abusive husband.  

The Magical Girl of Time murdered her abusive husband with her powers, but we can’t dwell on that because the Magical Girls of the world need her powers to stop Global Warming.  So they go to recruit her, leaving the protagonist in the dark.  Everyone was convinced the main character was going to be the Magical Girl of Time, and it was even further supported by her intense relationship to clockworking.  Our protagonist is devastated, and goes over what her reaction is to this.  I liked this part of the book, and when she’s alone her thought process is strikingly realistic.  Now she’s a no-one again, Ah Roa has stopped reaching out, she’s in debt and jobless again, and she’s got this stupid talisman that will not activate and she now doesn’t even know what her powers are.  I liked this subversion of expectations but the ending just kinda ruins it.  But for now, Ah Roa and the Magical Girl world comes back into her life.  

We’re now in the middle of the story and Ah Roa, who has been helping the protagonist since she tried to jump off the bridge and really believed in her being the Magical Girl of Time, comes back to apologize for running off and explains what is going on with the real Magical Girl of Time.  All of the feelings of disappointment and resentment seem to disappear from the protagonist when she realizes that someone still cares for her.  And to make matters weirder, Ah Roa confesses her feelings for our main character?? It’s incredibly random and not predictable at all.  It doesn’t feel like a queer filler story or queer-baiting (since the main character doesn’t return the feelings) it just feels awkward.  Ah Roa’s reasoning is that she had seen the vision of the protagonist with her clairvoyant powers, and knew our main character was special.  Ah Roa thought that vision meant she was the Magical Girl of Time, but since she was wrong about that, it must mean that she’s her soul mate.  Ok.  That’s also kinda what the protagonist's reaction is, “ok.”  She doesn’t return Ah Roa’s feelings but thinks that she will eventually feel the same way, since “Ah Roa is always right”.  Which feels (unintentionally?) predatory.

So the real Magical Girl of Time basically decides she’s not gonna help the Magical Girls of the World, and instead is going to speed-up Global Warming in order to end all of humanity even quicker.  She releases a video to the public explaining her plan, and states that she got the idea from the Magical Girls that tried to recruit her.  What no one seems to mention is how the plan the Magical Girls have, stopping time to blow up these huge companies, is illegal.  The place in society and in relation with the law that the Magical Girls hold is never explained well enough to defend this plan or reasoning.  But I digress.  

All of the Magical Girls (Ah Roa brings the protagonist along) make a plan to trap the Magical Girl of Time into a liminal place and either reason with her or destroy her.  In all of this, the protagonist is still powerless but technically a Magical Girl because she has a talisman.  Basically it goes horribly wrong and now the Magical Girl of Time has all the Magical Girls of South Korea trapped in a liminal space and plans to kill them all very slowly.  

So all hope is lost, defenseless and unable to transform, unaware of what her powers might even be, our hero is stuck.  Do you remember when I was talking about how I WISH she was wrong about not being in a manhwa?  Our protagonist realizes her powers, the power of Hope, the power of WISHES.  She literally WISHES for the Magical Girl of Time’s powers to disappear and they do.  The end.  It doesn’t actually end there, it just explains things and then it ends.  

And that’s the story.  Do I even need to continue with this review?  I’ve already stated my reactions before I explained the plot.  Probably to tell you how to feel rather than let you make an opinion yourself when reading the plot summary.  But I’ll say it again.  I hated this book.  It was too fast, it didn’t make sense, it offered an interesting premise and did NOT deliver.  This book was, I believe, the first of Park Seolyeon’s to be translated into English. I hope if she translates another oil into English it is a little better than this one.  

As always, feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions of what I could do better, or anything that you like. Of course I mean no hate to the author or translator of the book, this is just for fun. Check out my other reviews if you are interested, and I will write to you again, soon.

Best, Bug