Xia Ke Xing (Manhwa) Review

Plot: A scholar who calls himself Xia Ke stumbles upon a mysterious masked woman known as ‘Miss Ugly’. She is set to be a local village’s sacrifice to the Huang deity, and she’s accepting her fate with open arms since it’s the least she can do for the family who was nice enough to adopt her…..even though they only adopted her for the pure reason of sacrificing her in order to protect their blood daughter from being the sacrifice. However, her situation is not quite what it seems, and it’s up to Xia ke to save her.

Breakdown: Xia Ke Xing is alright, but it never really wowed me. I feel almost like this manhwa should’ve been a short story instead of continuing on past when the initial plotline is resolved.

After it is resolved, Miss Ugly, actually named Liu Yan, joins Xia Ke on his journeys since there’s really no place for her anymore, and she’s lost her memories of everything from before when she was adopted. The actual circumstances surrounding her previous life are somewhat vague. A bandit that they meet seems to believe that she’s the lone survivor of some prestigious family that he used to help protect, but her illusions in the latest chapter seem to lean on the side of her being some assassin.

They also meet a bandit named Li Fung who also kinda joins them on their journeys. He’s not on very friendly terms with either Liu Yan (whom he calls ‘stupid girl’) and Xia Ke (whom he calls “Xu Xia Ke” or fake Xia Ke since Xia Ke is the name of a character in a legendary story.) His focus is that he wants to be a government official I guess for the benefit of his mother and younger sister.

After the thing with Miss Ugly, the series kind of strays off and has no real focus beyond finding out who Liu Yan really is. It feels somewhat set up like Inuyasha in that regard since we have a clear goal, yet there’s a lot of side-tracking going on during the journey. Since the manhwa’s not too far along it seems, I can’t know for sure.

Art: The art’s pretty nice when both being artistic and when being cartoonish-ly funny. The eye designs bothered me a bit, but everything else is very nice.

Bottom Line: It’s a pretty good read. Nothing fantastic, but still enough to keep you interested. The characters are likable and have pretty good chemistry. The story kinda tapers off after the Miss Ugly arc, but that might get more interesting as time goes on.

Additional Information and Notes: Xia Ke Xing was written and illustrated by Jun Xiao and it was published by Star Girls.

Volumes: ??? Nine chapters have been released publicly, but it hasn’t been updated in over ten years. Safe to assume it’s canceled, sadly.

Year: 2007

Recommended Audience: Nothing really offensive. No real nudity, no serious violence….there is one scene that is pretty hard to read considering a child ends up dying quite horribly, but it’s not really graphic, it’s mostly your mind’s eye visualizing what’s happening after. 10+

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30DAC – Day 25: Saddest Anime Death

(Welcome. You’re in Spoiler City) I had no internal debate about this one, because this death always, and I mean always makes me cry. It was so sad that merely hearing music associated with it makes me cry.

The main character, Teito Klein’s, absolute best and only friend is Mikage Celestine. They are Zaiphon users who were training their abilities in the Barsburg Military Academy to become soldiers. Teito is a former sklave (basically a slave) who has lost his childhood memories. He is captured by the Barsburg Empire and sent to the academy to become a soldier due to his great talent.

Teito isn’t very sociable, and he comes off as cold because of how he’s been treated throughout life, but the outgoing, gentle, lovable and just all around great guy Mikage eventually becomes best friends with Teito.

Despite his dislike of violence, he dreams of being a soldier so that he can protect his family, but he willfully gives up this dream to help Teito escape after he’s charged with treason by the church.

He’s tortured for information and even his family is threatened with death if he does not tell them where Teito is. He escapes as a one-winged Kor, which is basically a failed attempt at trying to possess someone with the Ghost ability. In this case, the main baddie of the show, Ayanami, tried to possess Mikage with it.

Once a person is turned into a one-winged Kor, there is no saving them and reverting them back to normal like you can with a full-fledged Kor. If left alone, the one-winged Kor will eventually consume the soul of the person being possessed. The only way to save their soul is to kill the Kor and the person being possessed.

Mikage faces Teito and Frau, a bishop at the church that Teito flees to and one of the titular 07 Ghosts, Zehel, and eventually sacrifices himself on Frau’s scythe.

Teito is crushed by this, and dammit so was I. He deeply mourns for quite some time until Frau finds a little baby Fyulong and reveals that Mikage was reincarnated into that baby Fyulong who wishes for nothing more than to be by Teito’s side forever and protect him, even if he can’t remember who he used to be.

I have never blubbered my eyes out for so long at a show, and it made it so I can’t hear several songs on the 07 Ghost soundtrack (which is incredible, btw) without at least wanting to cry. Especially Tree’s Filtered Sunlight and Be Pure, My Child and Sleep.

Must….not….cry…

The bond between these two and their loyalty to each other was just so amazing to watch and it pains me that we didn’t get to see more of Mikage because he truly was an awesome character that you’d just love to know in real life.

The only thing that keeps me from crying when looking at Burupya is…..dammit, he’s so cute! Look at his wittle ears and his tiny scar!

You’re the best emotional brain bleach ever, Burupya!

Honorable Mentions (still spoilers): Toboe from Wolf’s Rain, Wolfwood from Trigun, Hughes from FMA.